


Of Sex, Love, and Telephone Wires

by DarylDixonGrimes



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - No Zombie Apocalypse, Alternate Universe - No Zombies, Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Ball Fondling, Choking, Creampie, Cum Eating, Cumplay, Dominant!Rick, External Prostate Stimulation, Feelings, Fisting, Frottage, Gore, Hair Pulling, Just Dudes Being Dudes, M/M, Masturbation, Mutual Masturbation, Nightmares, Nipple Play, Nothing to see here, Object Insertion, PTSD, Phone Sex, Prostate Massage, Rickyl, Rimming, SELF FACIAL, Smut, Submissive!Daryl, Swallowing, They probably will, bottom!daryl, but they might do them, constructionworker!daryl, cum swapping, drool, gagging, gaping, graphic depictions of death, i love how self-facial automatically becomes all caps, if it's dirty, jerking off, just assume it happens, lbh, listen I think i've about done everything in this story that can be done, okay i guess i haven't done spanking? yet?, perineum massage, phonesexoperator!rick, private sexting fort, seriously SO much masturbation, some of these tags apply to porns watched in the story and not things that R/D do, spit, top!rick
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-28
Updated: 2017-12-06
Packaged: 2018-05-23 20:07:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 21
Words: 66,476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6128632
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarylDixonGrimes/pseuds/DarylDixonGrimes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rick Grimes has been working for 1-900-2-DIAL-A-STUD for two years after a violent shooting and a cheating wife drove him to the city. Meanwhile Daryl Dixon has been struggling with the freedom of independence, including the freedom to explore his inclinations toward the same sex. When he finds the flyer for Rick's company, he decides to have a few beers and give it a whirl, only to discover that what he's been missing his whole life is a lot more fun than he ever imagined it could be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. I

**Author's Note:**

> Before anyone asks, I have every intention of expanding this out into a longer/larger AU. You can definitely tell it's been set up for that. 
> 
> But it's probably going to be a little while before I do. Consider this a teaser chapter or something until then. You can decide if you'd rather read it now or later. :)

Sometimes at night, Rick still dreamed about the shooting. The meth head's loaded revolver aimed right at him, six shots fired in rapid succession. It had happened so fast, but not fast at all. Bullet time—that's what science named the phenomenon that lets the human brain slow everything down in a high-stress situation.  
  
One round to the chest, caught by the vest but still strong enough to force the air right out of his lungs. One round to the shin, tearing through flesh and fracturing bone. Two rounds to the hip, each bullet like molten steel, leaving injuries he could still feel when the weather was just right. One round missed, embedding into the brick wall of the gas station behind him. The final round was the only one he couldn't remember. It entered through the front of his skull above his left eyebrow and exited above the left ear, damaging his frontal lobe and sending him into a coma.  
  
Rick lost three months of his life.  
  
When he finally woke up, Lori was two months pregnant. He didn't need to be a mathematician to realize those numbers didn't add up. He didn't need to be a detective to realize she and Shane had probably started fucking before he was ever in a hospital bed.  
  
The shooting and the idea of losing his partner had driven Rick from the force and anything even resembling police work. The price of a decent two-bedroom apartment in Atlanta and a lack of formal education outside of the academy had driven him to answering a slightly sketchy-sounding Craigslist ad in desperation. A quick application and a phone interview and Rick had gotten the job at 1-900-2-DIAL-A-STUD. Two years later, he was still there.  
  
“Either of you willing to take a guy?”  
  
Rick looked up from his coffee. Martinez stood in the door of the break room. The business operated out of rented office space on the outskirts of downtown Atlanta. Four cubicles, one in each corner of the office. Four men. Three normal shifts and a weekend crew. Rick had days along with an ex-army sergeant called Abraham, a college kid named Glenn trying to work his way through night school, and some asshole named Philip whom Martinez knew “from way back.”  
  
“Hell no,” Abraham said. “Why don't you ask your good buddy Phil?”  
  
“A guy?” Rick asked. Two years, and he had never spoken to anyone but women. That had been part of Martinez' business model even. There were so many phone sex lines for men but hardly any for ladies, so he'd decided to start one up and see how it did. If the size of Rick's checks were any indication, it had been a damn good idea too.  
  
“A guy,” Martinez confirmed. “I've got him on hold. Glenn's on with that farm girl who keeps calling for him. Philip's lunch break is in ten. C'mon fellas, money's money.”  
  
Rick had to admit he was intrigued.  
  
“Did you tell him this isn't that kinda line?” Abraham asked. “Nothin wrong with it but he can call somebody else.”  
  
“Hundred dollar bonus this week to whoever takes him.”  
  
“Sold,” Rick said, standing and picking his coffee mug up off the table. “What line?”  
  
“Four,” Martinez said. “Keep him over the ten minutes, and I'll have that bonus on your desk by the end of the day.”  
  
Rick nodded and headed toward his cubicle. The rules were simple for 1-900-2-DIAL-A-STUD. The first ten minutes were free for the customer. Every additional minute cost them forty cents, rounding out to around $20-25 for an hour of phone time. Ninety percent of that went directly into Rick's paycheck, plus a cut of the additional money Martinez made through some clever ad deals. Minus taxes and child support, of course.  
  
Rick sat down in his desk chair and slipped his headset over his waves, careful to position the microphone so it wouldn't scratch against his beard hair when he talked. Taking a deep breath to get himself in the right headspace, he flipped the little ten-minute hourglass he kept on his desk and hit the button for the line.  
  
“Hello Sugar, this is Constantine. What's your fantasy?”  
  
Silence on the other end of the line. Crap, the guy had probably already hung up after waiting so long to get off hold. Damn, and a hundred extra dollars would've been so nice with Carl's birthday coming up. He'd been asking for a drum set, something Rick was pretty keen on getting him since it would drive Lori and Shane up the wall.   
  
“C'mon now,” Rick said, hoping he was still there. “Don't be shy.”  
  
“I….”  
  
Rick smiled. Easiest hundred bucks he'd ever make.  
  


* * *

Sometimes at night, Daryl still dreamed about Merle and his father. The idiot biker gang his brother had gotten all mixed up in. Dingy fallen angel wings and the roar of bike engines. It had all been so messy. So violent. So final.  
  
Will Dixon going after Merle one more time, beating him bloody and senseless outside the local bar. Men with baseball bats and 2x4's showing up at their childhood home to get revenge for one of their own. A round of buckshot from Will's hunting rifle right in Merle's face. Hell On Wheels descending with blow after blow. One last ragged, labored breath from his father's lungs. Merle didn't even have time for one of those. Both men gone. And Daryl, the idiot, had talked to the cops without a lawyer, had been thrown in jail for weeks on weeks until some blonde hotshot from the city caught wind of his case and fought to get the charges dropped.  
  
Three fucking months in the hole for doing all of not a damn fucking thing.  
  
When he finally got out, the childhood home that would have been rightfully his was gone. Arson. Probably the gang trying to cover up any evidence left inside with the case reopened.    
  
Losing his family and his home had driven him out of rural Georgia toward the city where there were more jobs even for someone like him. It hadn't taken long for him to land a job with a construction company. Not the best, but it kept him a decent studio apartment in a half-decent neighborhood. Daryl didn't need much, and after two years he almost felt settled.  
  
Almost.  
  
He had found the flyer at a job site, clinging to the chain-link fence in the wind. Dingy and water-damaged, he'd nearly chucked it out along with an old page of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution also clinging nearby. But the thin muscular man on the flyer caught his eye.  
  
It was probably some stock photo of a “cowboy” pulled off the internet, but the guy had on light denim jeans and boots. Head down, the Stetson hat shielded his face from view, serving to make his abs and bare arms the focal points of the photo. Some of it was too much for Daryl. The perfectly-sculpted six pack of the model was too perfect, the shaggy blonde hair wasn't really his thing, and he didn't care much for the tribal arm band tattoos. But he found his eyes lingering elsewhere—the way the man's jeans fell across his hips, the slight bow of the legs, the gorgeous peaks and valleys of the man's hands with his thumbs casually hooked in his belt loops.  
  
That was part of Daryl's problem in settling. Finally being free in the city meant finally being free period. Which meant that there was no one to make him feel lesser for urges he couldn't seem to control. Urges that led to him eying up a dirty, cracked picture of a cowboy on a flyer and wondering what it would be like to let him suck his cock or even… He squinted to read the faded words.  
  
**Don't want to go out tonight? How about a hot night in alone?  
  
Our men are waiting ****by the phone** **24/7** **to listen to and** **fulfill your every fantasy** **and desire.  
  
Call now. First ten minutes are free, and we're always discreet.  
  
1-900-2-DIAL-A-STUD  
  
** Glancing back at the rest of the crew, he folded up the flyer and shoved it deep into his pocket before sticking the newspaper in the trash bag along with all the other litter he'd collected from around the job site. **  
**  
Two days later with a day off work (finally), a few beers (seven), and about three hours of working up the nerve, Daryl dialed the number.  
  
“1-900-2-DIAL-A-STUD, this is Julius. Are you a new customer, sweetheart, or do you have a favorite stud already?”  
  
Daryl's mouth went dry and sticky. He took another swig of beer.  
  
“N-new customer, I guess,” Daryl said.  
  
“Oh wow.”  
  
“Oh wow?”  
  
“Don't worry, um, sir. Just, let me put you on hold and one of our operators will be with you shortly,” Julius said. Daryl was almost sure he heard him mutter, “I hope” under his breath before he switched him over to hold.  
  
Daryl listened to advertisement after advertisement for different businesses. Web sites for discreet sex toys. Male strip clubs. Exotic dancers for hire. Costume superstore (rent one and fulfill his fantasies!). In between each advertisement was a clip of a man talking, asking him to be patient and stay on the line. Daryl sat down on his futon with a beer, watching the clock on the microwave. Five minutes. Seven minutes. Damn, he hoped the hold didn't count toward his free ten or he was going to be pissed.  
  
“Hello Sugar, this is Constantine. What's your fantasy?”  
  
It took Daryl a moment to realize that he was no longer on hold. That smooth molasses voice had already said “Hello Sugar” to him about twenty times before asking him not to hang up. But no, that wasn't the same script.  
  
“C'mon now, don't be shy.”  
  
“I…”  
  
Daryl thought he heard a little sigh of relief on the other end of the line.  
  
“How's this work?” Daryl asked.  
  
“How do you want it to work?” came the sultry reply. And damn if that alone wasn't worth the effort it had taken him to call.  
  
“N- No I mean, I was on hold for a while. Did that, you know, count?”  
  
“Did Julius not tell you?”  
  
“Guess not.”  
  
“No, it didn't count. First ten minutes with your stud are free. Additional minutes are 40 cents, which sounds like a lot, but that's about 20 bucks for an hour of whatever you want. About 25 for another hour if you want me to keep talking. Or listening. Sometimes people just want me to listen.”  
  
“Constantine ain't your real name, is it?” Daryl asked. The man on the other end chuckled.  
  
“Boss has kind of a Roman empire theme going. I think it's a bit of a mouthful for people to moan though, don't you?”  
  
“A bit,” Daryl said, swallowing hard. This man with a voice like dripping honey had intentions of making him moan. Sure that's what he was getting paid for, but… Fuck.  
  
“So why don't you tell me who your biggest celebrity crush is. Who do you fantasize about at night?”  
  
“I...”  
  
“Or maybe a non-celebrity. When you wrap your hand around your cock, who do you think about?”  
  
Everybody and nobody. A man he sat across from on the bus. Some nameless guy in a Russian porn he found with a moan that made his cock ache. Some wavy-haired stranger he'd stood in line behind at the grocery store. He struggled for a second to think of someone, anyone that actually had a name.  
  
“It's okay. I'm not here to judge you,” the man said. “I want what you want, to please you. That's why I'm here.”  
  
Movies that made him want to touch himself… He thought back to a night out with a few friends from work. Aaron and Tobin. A few beers, a movie, and…  
  
“Hawkeye is kinda alright, ain't he?” Daryl asked, feeling his cheeks grow hot as soon as he said it.  
  
“Hawkeye? From the Avengers?”  
  
Leave it to Daryl who was practically raised by the woods and his crossbow to crush on the fucking archer.  
  
“Yeah. Don't remember his real name though.”    
  
“Clint,” the operator said. “I could pull off Clint.”  
  
“Pull off Clint a whole hell of a lot better than anybody can pull off Constantine.”  
  
The other man laughed again.  
  
“What am I calling you today?”  
  
“Daryl,” he said, cursing himself as soon as he said it. He should've used a fake name. John or James or Jesus or something.  
  
“You're funny, Daryl.”  
  
“Nah.”  
  
“Okay Daryl, what'll it be today?”  
  
“I...”  
  
“Anything you want, I'm more than willing,” 'Clint' said, so seductively that Daryl almost whimpered. Problem was that Daryl had no idea what the fuck he wanted. He'd barely ever been with women, and he certainly had never been with a man.  
  
“Thing is, I don't… really...”  
  
“Know what that is?”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
Great. He was probably going to end up paying for an hour of him stumbling over words and trying to figure out why exactly he'd gotten himself all worked up and called a fucking phone sex hotline. He nearly just hit the end call button instead of putting himself through all that, but that smooth southern whiskey drawl on the other end made him pause.  
  
“That's okay,” Clint said. “How about we start simple, Sugar. Where are you right now?”  
  
“On the couch in my apartment.”  
  
“Sitting or laying down?”  
  
“Sittin.”  
  
“Why don't you lay down for me, Daryl,” Clint said. “Just get comfortable.”

“Okay,” Daryl said, shifting and sprawling out across the futon, cringing at how much it creaked when he did. Man, this guy was going to think he was poor as fuck. Granted, he was poor as fuck, but still.  
  
“Comfortable?”  
  
“Mhm, uh, Clint.”  
  
“Now, what do you have on?”  
  
Daryl looked down at his body.  
  
“Jeans and an old work shirt.”  
  
“Button up?”  
  
“Mhm,” Daryl said.  
  
“Good, that's nice,” Clint said. “That's real nice. Why don't you undo those buttons for me, top to bottom, nice and slow.”  
  
“O-Okay.” Daryl tucked the phone in between his ear and his shoulder and started on the buttons. One at a time with his hands trembling, he worked them out of their holes, slowly moving down his torso until the shirt was open.  
  
“You bare underneath that shirt?”  
  
“Mhm.”  
  
“That's hot, Daryl.”  
  
“I ain't.”  
  
“You sound hot from here,” the man said. “You have a nice voice. I hear a lot of 'em.”  
  
“Sounds like I gargled nails and cigarettes.”  
  
“That's not always a bad thing, Daryl. Sometimes rough is hot. Rough voices. Rough sex.” Clint said the last phrase with the perfect little hint of proposition. God, talk about things being hot. “Now, close your eyes for me and run your hands up and down your body. While you do, I want you to concentrate on how it feels to touch your skin.”  
  
Daryl left his phone tucked and did as he was told, slowly moving his hands up and down his chest and stomach.  
  
“Focus on how your skin feels under your fingers. I want you to worship every little bump and groove of flesh and muscle because that's what I would do if I was there. I would worship you.”  
  
Holy fuck.  
  
“Now focus on how your fingers and palms feel. Imagine how it would feel to have me there touching you. How do my hands feel?”  
  
“Rough.”  
  
“Do they feel good?”  
  
“Mhm.”  
  
“Daryl, I'm gonna give you another instruction in a second, but I need to make one more little rule here before I do.”  
  
“Hmm?” Daryl asked, fluttering his fingertips down his sides. That's what he'd want the stranger to do. The stranger who probably had much nicer hands than his own. The stranger who probably had juicy thighs and bow legs. And gorgeous hands as kind and smooth as his voice.  
  
“Don't touch anything I don't tell you to touch. Can you do that for me? Can you be patient and let me make this good for you?”  
  
“Yeah,” Daryl said. “Yeah, I can do that.”

“Good. I want you to enjoy this. I really really do. You ever played with your nipples, Daryl?”  
  
“Haven't.” Daryl had never done anything like exploring himself. He hated his body. Hated the scars left on it. Hated the way it looked in a mirror and the way his chest hair grew in all sparse and patchy. Masturbation was a straight-to-the-dick and hurry-the-fuck-up affair for him. But this taking his time shit wasn't all bad. Hell, this was almost nice.  
  
“I'll be honest with you, Daryl. Some people like it and some people don't. We're just exploring you a little. Figuring out what you like so you know. People deserve to know themselves. People deserve to enjoy themselves during sex, alone or with someone else. Don't you think?”  
  
Fuck, at that point ConstanClint could have probably asked him if he thought it was okay to chuck the elderly directly under buses, and he would have agreed. But the man had a point.  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“So start out slow, just brush your fingers and hands over them at first.”  
  
“Okay.”  
  
“Now use your fingertips to massage them in little circles. So far, so good?”  
  
“Feels nice.”  
  
“That's good. That's what I want. I want you to feel nice, Daryl.”  
  
“What comes after rubbing?” Daryl asked. His calloused fingertips caught and dragged a little on the sensitive flesh. He wanted more, so much more.  
  
Clint laughed.  
  
“Try squeezing them a little. Gentle at first. Harder if you like it. You can twist too or flick at them with your fingers. Then rub them some more after you've made them even more sensitive. Go on, play with them for a bit. Try all of that. See what fits and what doesn't.”  
  
Daryl gave them a little squeeze and a tiny twist, letting out a quiet moan and then blushing when he realized that Clint must have heard it.  
  
“Sorry,” he said without thinking, immediately feeling ridiculous. How many moans had that man probably heard? He expected it. Hell, it probably even was a sign he was doing his job right. Nothing to be embarrassed about.  
  
So why was Daryl's face still red hot?  
  
“For what?” Clint asked.  
  
“Don't know.”  
  
“The moan?” the operator asked. “Sugar, you can do that in my ear all you want. You got a nice one too. How about you share what you're doing that feels so good?”  
  
“I-I-I'm what you said to. The, uh, squeezing and the twisty thing.”  
  
“You like that, huh?”  
  
“Mhm.”  
  
“How about you squeeze them again, give them a little twist, and when you feel like moaning, just let it come on out. Don't think so hard, Sugar. Just relax and enjoy how good it feels.”

Daryl did as he was told, obediently squeezing and twisting at the tiny pink nubs on his chest, a soft moan falling out of his lips.  
  
“There you go,” Clint said. “What a gorgeous noise that is. Rub 'em real gentle for a minute, then twist a little harder and see what your body thinks of that, Daryl.”  
  
Two fingers on each, Daryl softly rubbed his sore nipples, mming quietly at the feeling of his roughened skin with the increased sensitivity. Pulling his lips in between his teeth, he steeled his nerves and then grabbed hold, giving each little nub a firm twist. He cried out softly at the pain of it, but that didn't stop his cock from twitching and his back from arching off the couch. Goddamn that was good. He twisted again, thinking very seriously about breaking Clint's little rule around no touching—not like the fucker could see him anyway. Another twist and arch. Something thudded onto the floor next to him.  
  
“Fuck,” he said, his hand flying to the space between his neck and shoulder. Nothing there. “Fuck fuck fuck.”  
  
He half-fell off the futon, scrambling for his phone which had rolled underneath it. God, what if it had hung up? Would they give him the same guy if he called back? He caught the phone with his fingertips and yanked it out from the dusty space under the couch.  
  
“Hello?” Daryl asked frantically.  
  
“I'm still here, Daryl,” Clint said. “And don't worry. That actually happens a lot.”  
  
“Yeah?”  
  
“All the time. If you ever decide to call me back, you might want to look into some headphones with a mic. They're cheap. Hands-free and no crick in your neck when we're done.”  
  
“Thanks,” Daryl said, settling back into his spot on the futon.  
  
“Your nipples nice and sore for me?”  
  
“Mhm.”  
  
“How about you only use one hand for that now,” Clint suggested. “Make sure you give the rest of your chest and body some attention too. But the other hand...”  
  
Daryl's breath hitched in anticipation. His cock gave a little throb of want.  
  
“The other, I want you to start sliding down your body for me, smooth and slow toward where we both know you wanna put it.”  
  
Daryl obeyed. Using his left hand to rub his chest and stomach and to keep playing with his nipples, he started his right hand on a journey toward his erection.  
  
“When you get down there, I want you to put your hand on the bulge in those jeans. I want you to rub on it through the fabric. Massage it. Feel how it would feel for me if we were kissing and I was touching you through your jeans.”  
  
Jesus Christ.  
  
Daryl moved the phone to the other side of his head so it would only fall on the couch if he had another mishap, and then he took hold of his erection through the layers of denim and cotton and gave it a little squeeze.  
  
“How hard is it? I need to know.”  
  
“Really hard,” Daryl said. “Hurts a little.”  
  
“Got a nice ache going, huh? Probably a relief to get to touch it for me.”  
  
“Mhm,” Daryl said, the sound coming out more as a moan than an actual reply.  
  
“Would it feel even better if I let you stroke it?”  
  
“Y-yes.”  
  
“It's incredibly hot how nervous you are, Daryl. You should know that,” Clint said. “Go on and unbutton those jeans. Push them down your hips a little so you have room to work.”  
  
Daryl eagerly reached down and undid his pants, frantically shoving the denim out of his way.  
  
“Got 'em.”  
  
“Lick your palm and get a nice grip on yourself. You know what feels good, don't you?”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“Base to tip, up once, down once.”  
  
Daryl gave himself a long, delicious stroke, letting out a little “ah” sound when he did.  
  
“Tell me something,” Clint said. “Because I know when I rub my cock, I catch the precum at the top and use it when I rub back down. How much are you leaking?”  
  
Daryl's brain short-circuited for a minute. Did the sex-voiced phone “stud” just tell him what he likes to do when he jerks off?  
  
There was no helping the mental image there—a faceless figure at a desk somewhere with his hand wrapped around his cock, furiously beating off while he talked Daryl through one of the hottest experiences of his life. And while he doubted very seriously that Clint was even allowed to touch himself at work, he couldn't help the thought. Or how said thought made him squirm. He gave himself another stroke without permission.  
  
“Daryl?”  
  
“Huh?”  
  
“How much are you leaking, Sugar? How much do you want me?”  
  
“Lots. Fuck, I want you.”  
  
He really did too. If Clint was this good at talking, he couldn't even imagine how good he would be at doing.    
  
“Good, I want you too,” Clint said.  
  
Or had he said “I want you to?” Did he want him to want him or did he want him back? Did it really matter since he was just acting? Was right now really the right time to give a fuck?  
  
“I want you to masturbate for me now,” Clint said. “Take it easy. Not too fast. Enjoy it. That's your job today, learning to really enjoy touching yourself and how good it feels to build up to it.”  
  
Daryl wet his palm with his tongue again and wrapped it back around his erection. Base to tip over and over, taking it as slow as he could stand it, which as it turned out wasn't very slow. It was maybe, _maybe_ slow enough to consider medium pace.    
  
“How's that feel?”  
  
“Wish it was... somebody else,” Daryl said quietly, barely stopping himself from saying, “Wish it was you” instead.  
  
“Hey, you gotta learn to get yourself off before you can teach someone else to do it,” Clint said. “If you want them to do it right at least. But you didn't answer my question, Daryl.”  
  
“Feels good. Real good.”  
  
“How are you doing it? Some classic old-school stroking?”  
  
“Mhm. Ain't that what you told me to do?” Daryl asked, a little moan slipping out after.  
  
“Yes, and you've been real good for me,” Clint said. “Just trying to get a picture of what's going on over there. You're on your couch with an open shirt, your cock hanging out of your jeans, stroking yourself. That sound about right?”  
  
“Mhm,” Daryl said. “Do I get to ask the same question?”  
  
“You wanna know what I'm wearin, Sugar?”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“I feel like you're the kind of guy who wants the real answer and not some lie I made up to sound sexier,” Clint said. “Am I right?”  
  
“Real answer,” Daryl said. “Please.”  
  
“Stop stroking and fondle your balls for a minute, and I'll tell you.”  
  
Daryl let go of his erection with a little whimpering sigh and shifted so he could gently rub his testicles.  
  
“Done,” Daryl said. “I'm doin it.”  
  
“Good. I'm wearing my favorite pair of faded black jeans and a plain white tee shirt,” Clint said. “And a pair of comfy black cowboy boots.”  
  
“Simple,” Daryl grunted, rolling his balls around in his fingers.  
  
“I'm a simple man, Daryl,” Clint said. “How's that feel?”  
  
“I don't know how much longer I...”  
  
“Good,” Clint said. “That's real good. I want it to be one of the best you've ever had by yourself. Do you think we'll get there?”  
  
“Think we already have,” Daryl said, his eyelids fluttering.  
  
“If you could see me, Sugar, you'd know I'm smiling right now.”  
  
“Can I… Can I go back to…?”  
  
“Stroking your cock? Yes, Daryl, you can,” Clint said. “You always so well-behaved in bed?”  
  
“Always what?” Daryl asked, already starting to work himself again with his hand, more furiously this time. It was all he could focus on. His cock and the hazy image of a man in a white tee shirt touching himself in kind.  
  
“Don't worry about it,” Clint said. “Just focus on cumming for me. That's all we need to worry about right now.”  
  
“Fuck,” Daryl said, his head falling back, and he lost the phone again when it did. “Fuck,” he said again, struggling to reach with his left hand to find it. He managed to hit the speakerphone button and plop it on his chest.  
  
“You still hear me?” Daryl asked. “Speakerphone.”  
  
“I can hear you just fine,” Clint said. “Keep going. Up and down, all the way down to the base, squeeze it just a little around the head there. You know how you like your cock touched, Daryl.”  
  
“Clint,” Daryl moaned, because he didn't know what else to do.  
  
“That's right,” Clint said. “Let me hear that sexy fucking voice, Daryl.”  
  
“Fuck,” Daryl groaned through his teeth. So close. So goddamn close.  
  
“Double fist it if you want, Sugar. Is cumming all over yourself an option?”  
  
“Yes,” Daryl said, pushing the hand rubbing his chest down to grip his cock. He bucked into both fists, letting out a moan as loud as he would dare without worrying about the neighbors.  
  
“Do it.”  
  
“All over myself?”  
  
“Mhm,” Clint said.  
  
“Fuck,” Daryl said. He pulled his lips in between his teeth, groaning deep in his throat. He cold feel his body getting ready. Drawn up and poised to let go. Close, so so close.  
  
“I've been doing this for two years,” Clint said. “And you make some of the sexiest noises I've ever heard.”  
  
“Ah fuck,” Daryl said, feeling his cock twitch with the beginning of his orgasm. He moaned softly with every spurt of cum onto his tummy. “M'cumming.” All over himself. Just like Clint wanted.  
  
“Give it another good stroke just to make sure,” Clint said. Daryl did, milking one more little string of cum out of the tip of his erection, and another tiny “ah” out of his lips.  
  
“There ya go,” Clint said. “Catch your breath, Sugar. Did you enjoy yourself?”  
  
“Mhm,” Daryl said, going limp on the futon while he caught his breath. “What do I do now? Do I gotta hang up?” He felt a little pang of sadness at that idea. He knew it was just work for Clint, but that didn't stop it from being a pretty damn important experience for him.  
  
“Sugar, there's no time limit,” Clint said. “You hang up when you're ready.”  
  
“Know it's not really, but it feels weird to just finish and hang up.”  
  
Clint laughed softly.  
  
“Well, since you're staying on the line, can I ask you something?”  
  
“Sure,” Daryl said, turning off speakerphone and putting the phone back to his ear.  
  
“You always that submissive?”  
  
“Submissive?”  
  
“Doing what you're told in bed like that. Is that what you're into?”  
  
Daryl wasn't entirely sure what he was and wasn't into. But he knew that he'd loved Clint telling him what to do, and if that made him submissive, then he supposed.  
  
“I guess,” Daryl said. “Why?”  
  
“So I know what kinds of things you might like to talk about if you ever call back,” Clint said.  
  
“Oh,” Daryl said. “Do you want me to?” And then he realized that was probably a bit of a stupid question. Of course Clint would want him to call back. He got paid for it, didn't he?  
  
“I'd really like that, Daryl,” Clint said. “I'm sure there's a lot more I can think of for you to do.”  
  
That was promising. A few more phone calls with 'Clint' and maybe he'd have the balls to try and meet someone.   
  
“Think I will, at least once.”  
  
“Good. I think there's a lot more for us to learn about you, Daryl.”  
  
“And they'll give me you? When I call back?”  
  
“They will,” Clint said. “Just ask for Constantine, and you're all mine.”  
  
“Okay,” Daryl said. “I'm gonna...”  
  
“Sure thing. It's been lovely talking to you and listening to that gorgeous moan of yours, Daryl. Thank you for calling in today.”  
  
“Thanks,” Daryl said. “Bye, I guess.”  
  
“Hey, Sugar...”  
  
“Yeah?”  
  
“Don't forget to look into those headphones.”  
  
“Mhm.”  
  
“Have a good day, Daryl.” Clint said.  
  
“You too, whatever your real name is.”  
  
Daryl hit the red end call button and reached back to set his phone on the rickety side table next to the futon. Sitting up, he slipped off the work shirt, using it to mop up the mess of orgasm on his stomach before tucking everything back into place and zipping up his jeans.  
  
Fuck.  
  
Resting his elbows on his knees, Daryl leaned his head into his hands, rubbing at his sweat-dampened hair with his hands.

He'd just had phone sex. With a man.  
  
Years upon years of hating what he was, then being afraid of it when he stopped hating. And THAT was what he'd been missing. Not just that, that and everything else he should have experienced by that point in his life. Hot and heavy kisses like the one Clint had mentioned. Blowjobs. Rough sex like Clint had…  
  
Daryl sighed and picked himself off the couch to go for a shower, already doing mental math to figure out just how much of his budget he could afford to spend on phone calls.


	2. II

Rick Grimes had never been one to half-ass a job. As a police officer and later a detective in narcotics, he was the one who always had his paperwork done before any higher ups had to start riding him for it. Hell, even as a burger flipper in high school, he always made sure he double-checked every single order he sent out.  
  
When he started his job at the phone line, he did it with just as much thoroughness as he had done every other thing in his life. He recognized immediately that the things he did with a woman in the real world required a little translation, so he researched what women wanted to hear. He took notes on what they liked and what the ones who called him back seemed to request the most. He had carved himself out his own niche in the company's little slice of the sex industry, and he had done a damn good job, which was precisely why, as soon as he hung up the phone with Daryl, he'd decided that he'd go home that night and start research on how to please men.  
  
And boy how Rick's blood quickened with that thought.  
  
There had always been a part of him that strayed far from women. He'd known about it since he was fourteen, when Shane's parents had gone away for the weekend and he'd shown Rick one of the porno films his dad kept hidden in his gun case. Both of them had gotten hard watching the damn thing, but Rick had found himself focusing on the man's broad shoulders and muscular back just as much as he'd focused on the woman's soft curves and the slick pink between her thighs.  
  
And maybe when he and Shane had gone to separate rooms to jerk off after deciding it would be "too weird" to do it together, Rick had listened a little more intently for his best friend than he should have.  
  
He had (mostly) buried that part of himself when he met Lori. He was way too enamored with her smile and her long, brown hair and her gentle nature. Sometimes, without thinking, he glanced at the occasional guy a little too long when they went out shopping, and sometimes when he touched himself in the shower, the image of the odd stranger or celebrity would slip in. When he finally learned what bisexuality was sometime in his late twenties, he had felt relieved in some way, like a missing piece of his own puzzle had finally been found. But having the _potential_ to like a man hadn't meant shit in terms of him being fully dedicated to his wife. And he had been. A hell of a lot more dedicated than she had been, it seemed.  
  
But Lori was a chapter in a book that had been closed for long enough that the bitter taste in Rick's mouth had just about faded. And the potential of a night spent looking into exactly how men liked to get off together had him squirming the entire commute home from work.  
  
When he got back to his apartment, he tossed a Hungry Man in the microwave and kicked off his boots before sliding down into the chair of his computer desk. Clicking on the Chrome icon, he sat there and waited for it to come up, listening to the whir of his food cooking in the kitchen. He wasn't even sure where to start.  
  
His cursor blinking in the search bar, he decided the technical details might be the best place to begin his journey. After all, Rick had never had sex with a man, and he wasn't entirely sure how all that even went down. He could do enough to guess that part D went into slot A, but that didn't mean he knew exactly how. Typing “gay sex” in, he hit enter and got up to grab his meal from the kitchen.  
  
When he sat back down with his rubbery chicken fried steak, his first thought was that he really should've known better. The entire first page of search results was nothing but porn on top of porn.   
  
Links promised everything from “romantic gay sex” to “hot gay dick and ass fuck.” Rick shook his head and took a bite of mashed potatoes, opening his mouth and reverse-blowing when the heat singed his tongue. He went back up to the search bar, intending to search for “how to anal sex” instead, but he paused before hitting enter again.  
  
He had never watched gay porn before. Lori had been a stickler about porn in general in the house, so vehemently against it that Rick never even tried to get away with stashing any or hiding his search history. The only porn he'd gotten to watch during their marriage was stuff Shane insisted on showing him on his phone in the lulls between traffic stops, and it hardly ever involved men at all.  
  
Rick scrolled back down. “Sexy twink loves big black dick. Gay XXX vids.”  
  
What the hell was a twink? He opened up another tab and searched the word. Oh. No, that definitely wasn't his thing. He went to page two.  
  
“Greedy sub takes it all.”  
  
Now there was a term Rick knew well enough to feel properly tantalized.   
  
Taking a glance around his apartment, like Lori might somehow be there ready to jump down his throat, Rick clicked the link. A moan assaulted his ears almost immediately, and Rick scrambled to turn the volume down, clicking the little speaker icon repeatedly. The computer dinged multiple times in quick succession, the volume control popping up and down over and over. Then the screen froze entirely, stuck on an extreme close up of a cock buried inside of another man's ass. The sounds continued playing.  
  
“Yeah, you're takin like a proper slut,” a voice said, followed by more moaning, this time even louder.  
  
Rick swore and plopped his meal down onto the desk, yanking open the top drawer and digging around for headphones before shoving them into the jack. Jesus Christ. Growling low in frustration, he resisted the urge to snatch the whole machine up and throw it against a wall, all the while telling himself repeatedly that it probably wasn't as loud as he thought it was and that his neighbors (a lovely couple who kept inviting him to church about once a month) probably weren't even home to be scandalized.  
  
Another bite of his meal, and the thing finally unfroze. Transfixed, Rick watched while one man plunged endlessly into the reddened rim of the other man's body. Slowly and unwilling to take his eyes off the screen for even a second, Rick groped around for the headphones and put them on.  
  
“...more. Fuck me harder.”  
  
Rick couldn't see the face of the man bent over the garden table, but he had a pretty broad back, decently tanned and gorgeously stretched in his effort to grip the other side of the table with white-knuckled fingers. A snake tattoo wove around one of the muscular thighs that he used to push back against the efforts of the man fucking him, meeting every single thrust with a jerk of his hips.  
  
“Yeah, you've got a greedy little asshole, don't you? You want every damn inch of me stretching you open.” 

The other man wasn't bad either. Older and fit, with a graying beard that complimented his features nicely. Rick wouldn't submit to him, not like the gorgeous (from behind, at least) creature on the table. But he wouldn't have said no to a little mutual hand action.  
  
“Fuck, yes. Give me all of it. Tear me open.”  
  
Rick sank lower into the desk chair, reaching for the button of his jeans before he even realized he was doing it. When he finished with the zip, he did a quick glance back at the door of his apartment to make sure the bolt was done, and then he reached into the confines of the black denim to fish out his cock.  
  
The gorgeous boy on the table moaned again, finally turning his face toward the camera. He was decent looking. Short, brown hair with a strong jaw and eyes like dull emeralds. But the thing that made Rick's cock twitch in his hand was the line of drool leaking out of the corner of his mouth onto the table.  
  
Goddamn.  
  
He might not know jack shit about how to do it, but he knew already that he wanted to fuck a boy just like that—a greedy little sub who begged for Rick's cock the way no one else ever had in his entire life.  
  
“Fuck him harder,” Rick muttered quietly, already working himself in nice, long strokes. He wondered which of these men Daryl would be more like. If the phone call was any indication, he would be more like the one Rick wanted a little more with every moan and beg. That thought tantalized him a lot more than it should have, because Rick was a professional, and being a professional meant that he generally didn't _actually_ fantasize about fucking his clients.  
  
Hell, he didn't even know what Daryl looked like.  
  
“You want me to cum, you filthy fucking whore?” the older man asked.  
  
“Fuck, yes. Fill my tight little hole with it.”  
  
Rick let his head fall back against the chair for a brief second, and then he tilted it forward again before he missed anything. More moaning and even more frantic fucking. The garden table rattled with their movements. Rick jerked himself harder, feeling his body edging toward release.  
  
The porn finished before he did, but all it took was a quick click of the mouse to take him back to the close up shot of the cock buried in that gorgeously stretched pucker. Rick closed his eyes, losing himself in the moans and the begging all while he imagined being the one to plunge into that delicious heat himself. He tightened his grip, trying his best to fathom what it might possibly feel like to have the warm pressure of the boy's body encircling him on all sides.  
  
Another plead of “harder, motherfucker” from the boy and Rick was gone, spurting cum all over his desk and keyboard and even onto the screen, where it ran slowly down, leaving a pixelated rainbow streak on the boy's back.  
  
Closing out the tab, Rick pulled off his tee shirt and mopped up his mess. The keyboard proved a little troublesome, with cum trying its best to drip down between the I and O, but he managed to floss the hem of his shirt between the two, inadvertently typing a long stream of “ooooiiooioioiooi” into his address bar.  
  
When he finished, he tossed the shirt in the general direction of his bedroom. Then he tucked himself back into his jeans and finished the rest of his mostly cold dinner, scarfing it down and hardly tasting any of it.  
  
A quick change into some pajama pants and a faded Charlie Daniels shirt, and Rick sat back down at his computer, hell-bent on doing some real research instead of spending his whole night watching gay porn. To his credit, he managed to read three entire articles on male masturbation and how to properly engage in anal penetration before he found himself seeking out "gay sub videos."   
  
He jerked off two more times before he finally went to bed.  
  
  



	3. III

The bar around the corner was called Mick’s. It was a quiet place, the sort of bar where a man got a beer and sat silently while he drank it. Dingy white bowls on the counter held stale peanuts, and the dusty jukebox in the corner was more for decoration than use. In a world of local breweries and craft beers, it boasted only the standards—Budweiser, Miller, Coors, sometimes a Corona if Mick’s daughter was in town to stock them. To a man like Daryl, it was comforting and homely in its simplicity.  
  
He went there for lunch on his second day off, or rather after he had lunch in his apartment. Mick’s didn't do food beyond little packets of plain Lay's potato chips. But Daryl had finished all of his beer the previous day working up the nerve to call the phone line, and Mick’s was closer than the nearest store. So there he was, enjoying a cold Coors Light and absentmindedly watching whatever sporting event was on the ancient TV sitting behind the bar.  
  
“Hey,” Aaron said, sliding into the seat next to him. Daryl glanced over and nodded at him.  
  
“Off too?” Daryl asked. Aaron lived in another apartment close to his. Most of the guys they worked with were concentrated in this little area of Atlanta, which meant Mick’s was a pretty standard place to end up after a hard day. Or the middle of a day when one wasn't working.  
  
“Yeah,” he answered quietly. Conversations at Mick’s were held in low voices if they were held at all, a stark contrast from the raucous laughter spilling from the sports bar a couple streets over. Aaron signaled for a beer, and Daryl thought about divulging. Or asking for advice. Or something. But really he thought most about getting enough alcohol in him to go back upstairs and dial the line again. Even though advice would have been the more fiscally responsible thing to want. Even though Aaron was the only person he could think of who might have any.  
  
Daryl knew Aaron was gay. Everyone did. It was just one of those things that was common knowledge among the people he worked with, though he couldn't quite remember how the information had come to be. Some assholes whispered about it when Aaron wasn't around. They called him dirty names and made crude jokes. Bigger assholes said things when he was around and didn't bother whispering.

Daryl had never been an asshole. At least not like that.  
  
“Do you think they’ll notice if we don’t show up tomorrow?” Aaron asked, reaching for a handful of peanuts and popping them in his mouth. “I’m getting kind of used to it.”  
  
“Mm.” Daryl took another sip. Somewhere, Constantine, Clint, whatever his real name was—somewhere he was speaking sensual saccharine while someone touched themselves and moaned whatever fake name he’d taken on. Daryl felt a small pang of ridiculous jealousy. “Maybe we should find a new line of work. Hear bein born rich is good money.”  
  
“I think we may have already missed out on that one,” Aaron said, “but it’s not too late to marry in.”  
  
“Good point.” Daryl polished off the rest of his drink and raised his hand for another. “Got any prospects?”  
  
Aaron considered it, watching the grubby TV. Daryl had finally noticed that it was a soccer game. He watched the tiny colored smudges that were the players move around on washed out green.  
  
“Think Charlie Hunnam is gay?” Aaron finally asked.  
  
“Who?”  
  
“Pacific Rim. Sons of Anarchy. I’ve been crushing on him since Queer as Folk.”  
  
“Nope.”  
  
“No you don’t think he’s gay, or no you still have no idea who he is?” Aaron looked over at him with a faint, easy smile on his features. When he was happy, he was the kind of person who looked so natural with it that you’d have a hard time believing he’d ever been troubled.  
  
“Not a damn clue,” Daryl said. He had an old CRT television in his apartment with an antenna that only picked up local stations, and he only ever watched movies when the guys at work invited him out or when they came on one of the channels he got.  
  
“Here,” Aaron said, fiddling on his phone. He slid it across the bar a second later. There were a few rows of images up on the screen. A man with light hair and a slightly pointed jaw. In some photos, he had facial hair that suited him well. In one photo, he was shirtless with pants slung low on his hips revealing a tantalizing V. It reminded Daryl a little of the cowboy from the phone line flyer, and his fingers twitched with the desire to see the photo bigger, but he stopped himself.  
  
Where everyone at the construction company knew Aaron was gay, not a soul knew about Daryl. He wasn’t sure he wanted to change that. He wasn’t sure he wanted to have to put up with the things at work that Aaron had to put up with.  
  
“Hmm,” he said, sliding the phone back. He still had no idea who the guy was. But he was starting to feel his beer. One more. One more and he was going to go upstairs and… Heat pooled in his jeans, and he dug his nails into his palm until he forced his budding erection to stop.  
  
“Alright,” Aaron said, “I’m making you watch Pacific Rim next time we hang out.”  
  
“What’s it about?” Daryl ordered another beer. His pulse quickened enough for him to feel it.  
  
“Giant robots.”  
  
“Like Transformers?” Daryl asked, downing half his drink in one go. Aaron gave him an amused look.   
  
“Kind of. Like Transformers driven by hot guys to fight huge alien monsters.”  
  
Daryl furrowed his brow. He wasn’t drunk enough for that plot summary.  
  
“It’s better than it sounds,” Aaron said. “I promise.”  
  
“Sure, okay,” Daryl agreed, his beer getting dangerously close to empty. He fidgeted, his nerves floating in some weird place, suspended between enough-alcohol-to-get-him-past-his-fears and holy-fuck-I’m-gonna-do-it-again.  
  
“Are you alright?”  
  
Daryl poured the last drop into his mouth and tossed some bills onto the counter. He stood up, flushed with fermented warmth.  
  
“Yep. I’ll see you tomorrow.”  
  
He barely heard Aaron say good-bye. And he’d probably been rude if he really thought about it, but he needed to get back to his apartment before any part of his buzz started to wear away.  
  


* * *

  
“1-900-2-Dial-A-Stud, this is Julius. Are-”  
  
“Can I have Cl-Constantine?” Daryl blurted out before throwing in a muttered, “please.”  
  
“One moment.” The call transferred to the hold line. A husky voice promised him a fun night at Hunkytown Male Strip Club. Daryl couldn’t even imagine walking into a place with the audacity to choose that for its name. A voice cut in right in the middle of the man promising one dollar drink specials on a certain night. “He’s with another customer right now, so you might be on hold for a minute.”  
  
Daryl chewed on his lip. He hadn’t prepared for that sort of thing in his tenuous plan. He should have known that Clint had other customers. Hell, it wouldn’t surprise Daryl if he was the most popular guy they had. But he hadn’t really considered that he might not be readily available every time he called.  
  
“Oh. Okay, I guess,” he said, hoping that the man would be done before he lost his nerve and hung up.  
  
“Obviously there's no charge if you decide to hang up before he gets to you.”  
  
“Right,” Daryl said, pacing a little in his living/bedroom. The line cut back over to hold. He recognized some of the ads from before, and he found himself tuning them out. The only thing he listened for were Clint’s little requests that he keep holding. Each time the man promised him he was waiting to talk to him, Daryl felt his pulse skip.  
  
He marked time on the microwave clock, telling himself over and over that he was still drunk enough to hold on while five minutes turned into ten turned into fifteen. He could feel his buzz slipping, and he contemplated giving up, jerking off in the shower, and then lazily watching TV for the rest of the day.  
  
Five. He would give it five more minutes. He lounged on the futon with the speaker on, his phone sitting on his chest.  
  
“I can’t wait to talk to you, Sugar. Just stay on the line for me.”  
  
Five more minutes came and went. Daryl tipped his chin to look down at his phone and sighed. What a waste of bar money. He picked it up, and reluctantly inched his finger toward the “end call” button.  
  
“Hello Su-” He heard the words as he hit it, right before the phone pulled up a blinking 22:05 to tell him how long the call had been.  
  
No no no. Fuck.  
  
"Shit." In his hurry to call back, Daryl accidentally dropped/violently flung his phone down onto the carpet between his feet. He groped for it, picking it up and swearing when he realized it had turned off in self-defense.   
  
"Turn on you fuckin piece of shit. Goddammit." He bounced his leg, feeling irrationally pissed off by the various logos floating across his screen on startup. Who had the fucking time to care what fucking network their $20 joke of a smart phone was on when Clint was waiting? Finally,  _finally,_ Daryl was able to dial the line back, requesting Constantine as soon as he could get the word out.   
  
The hold lasted all of ten seconds, just long enough for him to remember to be nervous again.  
  
“Hello Sugar, this is Constantine. What’s your fantasy?”  
  
“Hey,” Daryl choked out. He could feel his heart beating in his throat and his head and his fingertips.  
  
“That you, Daryl?”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“It’s good to hear from you. Did you get those headphones for me?”  
  
Fuck. He hadn’t even thought about them.  
  
“Not yet,” he said.  
  
“That’s okay,” Clint said. “So, do you have anything in mind, Darlin? Or do you just want me to help you keep exploring yourself?”  
  
Daryl swallowed.  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
Clint chuckled softly, each note of his low laugh sounding like its own individual sin.  
  
“Yeah to which question, Daryl?”  
  
“The… the second one.” His voice came out a little more hoarse than he would’ve liked. “The explorin.”  
  
“I was hoping you’d say that. Are you laying down?”

“Mhm," Daryl said, shifting to sprawl back out on the futon.   
  
“Good. That’s good. What do you have on for me today?”  
  
Daryl looked down. As usual, he’d grabbed what was clean and thrown it on without too much thought.  
  
“Jeans and a black tee shirt. You?”  
  
“Take your shirt off first, and I’ll tell you,” Clint said. “Actually, you know what, go ahead and take it all off.”  
  
“Okay.” Daryl laid his phone down on the mattress and stood up, peeling off his clothes and letting them pile on the floor next to his couch/bed. He picked his phone back up, glancing over at the blinds to make sure they were still shut, like he had ever had the damn things open the entire time he'd lived there. There was nothing worth looking at in the alley behind his building.   
  
“Alright,” he said, the air of the apartment kissing his bare skin.  
  
“You’re naked?”  
  
“Mhm.”  
  
“Truth again?” Clint asked.   
  
“Please.”  
  
“I’m in the same jeans. I overslept this morning, so I threw them back on. Plaid shirt.”  
  
“What color?” Daryl asked, trying to picture it and him. Thanks to Aaron, Clint now looked vaguely like that Charlie Hunnam guy mixed with the cowboy from the flyer and Hawkeye himself. Something told Daryl that this mental image was both wrong and inaccurate on just how hot the guy really was. A guy with a voice like that had to be a goddamn stunner, right? His vision wasn't bad looking, but it was too… muddled?  
  
“Blue. Light blue. Sleeves rolled up because, well, Atlanta.”  
  
“Can… I mean…" Daryl sighed. "Hell, never mind.”  
  
“You can ask me anything you want, Daryl. I’m here to please you, remember?” Clint's tone washed over Daryl like the low beat of some sexy rock song.   
  
“Just wonderin if you’d tell me kinda, maybe what you look like a little?”  
  
“Sure, but you’ll have to earn it as always. What are you willing to do for that information?”  
  
A quiet voice in the back of Daryl’s head told him that he’d probably kill a man using nothing but a box of toothpicks and his own ingenuity if he was being truly honest. Instead he went with an answer that was a little less intense.  
  
“Anything.”  
  
“Touch yourself. Anywhere but your nipples or your cock. Just run your hands all over your body. I want you to get yourself nice and revved up for me, Daryl.”  
  
Tucking his head to hold his phone in place, Daryl did as Clint instructed, ghosting calloused hands over the smooth skin that stretched over his rib cage and down his sides. Fingertips tickled the tops of his thighs before moving up to graze the flesh concealing his hip bones.  
  
“Close your eyes, Daryl. Pay close attention to how good it feels. Has anyone besides you ever touched you like this?”  
  
“Nuh uh.” Daryl ran his palms up and down his torso, coasting over the peaks and valleys made by muscle and bone.  
  
“I would,” Clint said, in a voice so seductive it would’ve made angels pluck fruit straight from the tree of knowledge. Daryl’s cock twitched and dribbled, and it took all he had not to disobey.   
  
“You gonna tell me?” Daryl asked.  
  
“Mhm. What do you wanna know? You’re allowed to touch your nipples now. You like playing with those a lot, don’t you?”  
  
“I do,” Daryl said. He tweaked one hard and arched up off the couch, moaning softly.  
  
“Did I tell you last time how much I love that moan of yours, Daryl?”  
  
“Mhm.” Daryl tweaked the other, then both at the same time. They were a little bruised, which made them even more sensitive than they had been the day before. “What, uh, what color are your eyes?”  
  
“Blue. Do that again, whatever made you make that pretty sound for me.”  
  
Daryl did, letting himself moan a little louder for the benefit of the man on the other end of the line, like the man actually gave a shit.  
  
“That’s real good, darlin,” Clint said. “Hell, I could jerk off to that all afternoon.”  
  
“What color’s your hair? What’s it like?” Daryl moaned again. He let himself imagine that Clint was doing exactly that, jerking off to every single sound he made.   
  
“It’s, uh...” Clint trailed off for a moment. “Well, it’s brown. A little wavy with a tendency to curl up on me if I go too long without a haircut.”  
  
The mental image in Daryl’s head shifted slightly. He knew it still wasn’t right and that it never would be, but at least the hazy outline of the man in his head wasn’t blond anymore.  
  
“Can I ask you something, Daryl?”  
  
“Sure.”  
  
“Since we’re figuring out how you like to be touched and pleased, do you think penetration is something you’d enjoy?”  
  
Daryl froze with his hands on his nipples. Some ancient instinct in him reared up, and he very nearly spouted out a defensive "ain't gay" before he swallowed the reaction down again, because obviously he fucking was and Clint more than knew it. Then, he reconsidered the question properly. Sure, he had thought about it in some vague way, like he knew that was something that happened sometimes when two guys got frisky. But he’d never actually _thought_ about it as a tangible thing that he might do or enjoy, or not enjoy for that matter.  
  
"Daryl?"   
  
“Dunno,” he said.  
  
“Alright,” Clint said. “In that case, is it something you’d like to try? Would you wanna find out?”  
  
Daryl considered it, unable to stop himself from imagining slipping his hands down there and pushing inside. His cock did a small leap in excitement, but his stomach twisted anxiously at the same time.  
  
“Dunno,” he said again.  
  
“That’s okay,” Clint said. “It’s normal to not know. You don’t have to decide today. How about you think about it, and if you decide to call back—and sweetheart, I really hope you do—we can talk about it then?”  
  
“Yeah,” Daryl agreed. “Sounds… yeah.”

“Back to the good stuff. How’s that pretty cock of yours, Daryl?”  
  
“Leakin all over me.”  
  
“Too bad I’m not there to lick all that up, huh? Would you like that? Being in my mouth?”  
  
Daryl let out a quiet whimper, and Clint laughed quietly.  
  
“Go ahead and touch if you want. I’ll be over here imagining how you’d taste on my tongue.”  
  
“Jesus Christ.”  
  
“Yeah, you want that huh? Me wrapping my lips around you, taking you all the way into my mouth.”  
  
Daryl licked his palm and wrapped it around his cock, writhing into the touch. He groaned.  
  
“There you go, Daryl. Stroke that cock for me. Let me hear all those gorgeous little sounds coming out of your dirty mouth. Tell me how good it feels.”  
  
“Fuck,” Daryl sighed. “Don’t stop talking.”  
  
“Don’t worry, Sugar, I won’t. I won’t stop thinking about you either. I’d love to get my mouth on your balls, suck on them one at a time while I jerk you off.”  
  
Daryl could’ve sworn his lungs themselves trembled at the thought, his breath coming out ragged and broken. He had a vague notion that he was panting heavily into the phone and Clint’s ear, but he couldn’t focus on the thought long enough for it to have any impact. He stroked harder.  
  
“Tell me what you’re doing, Daryl.”  
  
“Rubbin it.”  
  
“Fast?”  
  
“Mhm.”  
  
“What are you doing with your other hand, Sugar?” Clint asked.  
  
“I...” Daryl’s other hand sat limply on his stomach, warm and sweaty against the skin above his navel. “What you want me to do with it.”  
   
“Hmm,” Clint said, and something about him actively thinking about what Daryl should do to himself was more tantalizing than if he’d had a ready answer. “Well, technically I want you to put it down my pants, but since that’s not really an option.”  
  
Daryl was sorely tempted to say it could be, but he knew better. Just like he knew that Clint was full of shit. But he didn’t care. All that mattered was that voice like drizzling caramel was telling him to touch himself every single way he could think of.

“Can you concentrate enough to take a complicated direction?”  
  
“Can try.”  
  
“You’re on your couch right?”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“There a way you can get your ass and legs up onto the back of it or one of the arms or maybe the wall?” Clint asked.  
  
“My...” Daryl tried to visualize enough to understand what the other man wanted from him, but all he could focus on was the friction and heat of his hand. Stroking and rubbing and feelssogood and… He moaned into the speaker. Clint mm’d in appreciation.  
  
“Focus, sweetheart. Legs and ass up on something. Easier to get to everything when you’re bent like that.”  
  
Daryl looked around. The easiest thing to do would be to pop the futon out and use the wall next to it.  
  
“Hold on,” Daryl said, reluctantly letting go of his cock. “Tell me somethin else about you while I do it?” He stood up and gripped the bottom edge of the metal frame, giving it a good yank to unfold the mattress.   
  
“I have a beard,” Clint said. Daryl crawled across the couch.  
  
“Like a beard beard or a goatee or a-” Daryl grunted quietly while he slid himself into position. He felt a little ridiculous, but Clint got what Clint wanted. Mostly because what Clint wanted had so far gotten him off harder than he ever had alone. “...a patch or what?”  
  
“Full beard,” Clint said. “It's a pain in the ass to keep the headset microphone out of it. How you doing over there, Sugar?”  
  
Daryl pushed off the wall on his heels, using that little bit of leverage to wedge himself into a slightly better position until he felt mostly comfortable. The result was him bent at the middle, his back forming one edge of a triangle where the wall and the futon mattress were the other two. His erection pointed downward at his chin, and his ass and thighs pressed up against the cool drywall.  
  
“Think I did what you wanted.”  
  
“You still touching yourself?” Clint asked.  
  
“Am now,” Daryl said, wrapping his fist back around his cock, seemingly tugging it toward his face.  
  
“Should be real easy to reach your balls now. I want you to play with them. Try some different things though. Cup and rub them like you already know you like. But also try some gentle tugging. Maybe scratch them lightly. If something doesn’t feel good to you though, you stop. Everybody’s different.”  
  
“What do you like?” Daryl asked. He was starting to pant in the other man’s ear again, even while he reached down to fondle himself. He knew he liked it gentle. He tried some of the other things instead, gently scratching at them with his blunt fingernails. It wasn't terrible, but it wasn't good either. He pulled on them just a little instead, testing the boundaries of what his body enjoyed. With a soft tug toward his ass, coupled with the feeling of his continued stroking, he found himself moaning long and quiet, an unbroken low whine escaping his lips. Clint let out a ragged breath in his ear, and Daryl could almost let himself imagine that the other man was getting off on this too. Almost.  
  
“Jesus, that’s nice, Daryl,” he said. “And I like to roll mine around in my hand if I play with them. That’s what feels good for me.”  
  
Daryl grunted a quiet response somewhere in between all his labored panting. He was close.  
  
“You ready to try something else for me?”  
  
“Yeah,” Daryl said, his voice coming out higher than he meant it too.  
  
“Keep stroking, and with your other hand, I want you to massage the skin between your balls and your ass. It might take a little feeling around to get it right, but give it a try for me.”  
  
“I...”

“If you don't think you’d like that, that’s okay too.”  
  
“No, it ain’t that. I’m just...” Daryl swallowed down a moan that still managed to half escape in a strangled little groan. “Close.”  
  
“This’ll make it better when you cum,” Clint promised.  
  
“Better when I...” Daryl stopped softly tugging on his balls and worked his fingers down the expanse of skin that stretched between them and his hole. He touched here and there. Soft touches felt nice, but he had a feeling that wasn’t what Clint had intended, so he tried again, pressing his fingers into the skin. Nothing there. He changed position, cringed a little at the awkwardness of it, changed, cringed, changed. There felt like it might be something if he kept-  _oh._  
  
“Oh. Oh _fuck_.”  
  
“Mhm,” Clint said approvingly. “That feels good, huh?”  
  
“Christ.” Daryl massaged harder, his mouth slacking open. A thin line of precum stretched from the head of his cock to a dribble on his chest. He let go long enough to scoop it up and rub it down his shaft.  
  
“Gonna cum so hard for me, aren’t you, Daryl?”  
  
“Mhm. Oh shit.”  
  
He was so close. So close and with pressure building in a way that he’d never felt before in his entire life. He pressed his mouth closed and groaned, the sound vibrating between his lips.  
  
“Gonna cum,” he choked, because he could feel the tension in his body starting to climb past the limit of what it would take.  
  
“I bet you are, Daryl. You keep rubbing that spot until the last drop. Can you do that?”

“Fuck.” Daryl would never stop rubbing that spot if he didn’t fucking have to. He couldn’t describe how it felt, only that it felt _more_ than just rubbing his cock. More. Better. Best.  
  
“I’ll take that as a yes. One other thing.”  
  
“Can’t.” Daryl huffed air of his nose, whimpering and panting while his body tightroped the line between incomplete and finished as fuck.  
  
“How do you feel about cumming all over your own face?” Clint asked.  
  
But it was too late for him to answer, because he was already doing it. He nailed his eyes shut right as the first warm spurt splashed across his cheek. He couldn’t even think enough to shut his mouth, a long moan tearing out from somewhere deep in his lungs. He could taste salt on his tongue, could feel slick on his lips. But all that mattered was how it felt to cum while he was touching that place. Each twitching spurt felt almost impossibly good, and if Daryl was ever going to die from pure orgasmic bliss alone, this was the time it was going to happen.  
  
“Keep rubbing until you can’t cum anymore, Daryl. Don’t stop. Fuck.”  
  
His body spasmed from the sheer amount of pleasure spiking through his nerve endings, but he didn’t stop, not until his cumming had slowed to a dribble that leaked out onto his sternum instead of shooting onto his face. Not until his cock refused to give him even a single drop more. Not until it started to feel like torture to keep touching himself.  
  
He let his hand drop off his cock and took the phone with the other, catching his breath. He darted a tongue out across his wet lips and wiped his eyes with two fingers.  
  
“How do you feel?”  
  
“Like my bones are gone.” He felt weightless and spent in the best possible way, like he was floating aimlessly in a cool creek in the woods.  
  
“Did you do it?” Clint asked.  
  
“Do what?”  
  
“Cum on your face.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“Shit. You got any damn idea how hot that is, Daryl?”  
  
Daryl didn’t answer. He didn’t know what to say to that.  
  
“Any of it still there?” Clint asked.   
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“Wanna wipe it off with your hand and then lick it clean? Let me hear you sucking it off your fingers.”  
  
Daryl did as Clint requested, cleaning his face off with his palm. He slurped cum noisily off his skin. Clint breathed a little heavier in his ear.  
  
“Beautiful, Daryl. Thank you.”  
  
Shifting on the futon, Daryl turned and took his legs off the wall, flopping down onto his back.  
  
“Was I right?” Clint asked.  
  
“Bout?”  
  
“It feeling better when you came.”  
  
“Yeah. It… yeah.” Daryl still couldn’t quite believe he’d cum as hard as he had. He had a feeling he was going to be touching himself like that pretty often even without Clint’s help. He also had a feeling it was going to kill him trying to fit in phone calls around work. He was generally too tired after he got home to want anything that involved effort. Masturbation after work, if he did it at all, usually involved him laying on his stomach and rocking into the mattress until he came. Easy and lazy.  
  
“Good. That’s… That’s real good, Daryl.”  
  
Daryl mm’d quietly in response. He closed his eyes, listening to the sounds of Clint breathing evenly and a little loudly on the other end.  
  
“Clint...”  
  
“Mhm?”  
  
Daryl struggled to come up with words. He hadn’t really had anything planned to say. It was just that, yet again, hanging up right after he finished felt weird.  
  
“Tell me somethin about you.”  
  
“Something about me?” Clint asked.  
  
“Know you can’t tell me anything too personal, but just… somethin.” Daryl tucked an arm up under his head. It was easier than reaching for his pillow since he’d somehow knocked it to the floor.  
  
“Hmm. My favorite color is red. Something like that?”  
  
“Yeah,” Daryl said. “Somethin like that.”  
  
“What’s yours?”  
  
“Green.”

“Like grass?” Clint asked.  
  
“I guess. Grass. Leaves. The woods.”  
  
“You like the outdoors, Daryl?”  
  
“Yeah. Always felt safer out there than at home,” he admitted.  
  
“Do you feel safe at home now?” Clint asked.  
  
Daryl felt himself frown before he actually felt the emotion hit him. That line of questioning put him dangerously close to thinking about things that he didn’t want to think about. Which meant he was also dangerously close to ruining a perfectly good mood.  
  
“Gonna go, Clint. Time is money and all that shit.”  
  
“I understand. Thank you for calling me again, Daryl.”  
  
“Yeah. Thanks for, well...”  
  
Clint laughed quietly.  
  
“You’re very welcome. I enjoyed it too.”  
  
“Bye, Clint.”  
  
“Bye, Daryl.”  
  
He hung up the phone and let it drop onto the mattress beside his head. Closing his eyes, he gave himself another minute or two to finish coming down from the phone call and the intensity of the orgasm he'd given himself at Clint's skillful direction. And then he got up and started pulling clothes back on.  
  
After he dressed, he washed his face four times in the bathroom sink, leaning in close to the mirror to look for anything that might give away what he’d done. He washed it one more time after that, just in case. Then he stuffed his cell into his back pocket and swiped his keys and wallet off the counter.    
  
He was definitely going to need another beer.


	4. IV

Rick had been completely undone a few times in his life. There had been the first time Lori ever smiled at him across the high school cafeteria. There was the first time they kissed. The first time they made love. Their wedding day. In other words, he had a pretty good idea what it felt like to become wholly unraveled, like his nerves were starting to fray apart at the edges like the ends of a piece of rope.   
  
This was one of those times.   
  
“Shit,” he hissed quietly, pulling off his work headset and dropping it on his desk. “Shit, shit, shit.”   
  
His jeans were far tighter than they had been that morning when he left his apartment, and he was grateful for the cubicle that hid him from view of the rest of the guys he worked with, because he’d been palming his cock for half the phone call with Daryl. He slid his hand over the unmistakably dick-shaped outline running toward his thigh, his eyes fluttering. It took everything for him to make himself stop before he did it again.   
  
Get it together, Rick. You’re a goddamn professional.   
  
He told himself it was just the newness of talking a guy off. It wasn’t like he hadn’t gotten turned on a few times when he first started the job, but after two years it was just work, and some days he was about as interested in real sex as he was interested in stabbing himself in the ear with a pair of barbecue tongs. He hadn’t had two years to get used to talking to men though. That’s all this was.   
  
He told his cock that four or five times, glaring at it and while he white-knuckled the arm rests of his desk chair to keep from touching. It didn’t budge, insisting on staying harder than the math section of the SATs.   
  
Fuck it. He was going to take his afternoon break. He knew himself well enough to know he could jerk off to completion in under three minutes if he really got after it. A quick bathroom break, and no one would ever have to know.   
  
He peered out of the opening of his cubicle and then reached into his jeans to rearrange himself. He was so hard and needy that he had to bite his lip to keep from making a sound. Just that single touch had positively killed him.   
  
He stood up, ready to go tell Martinez that he was going when his direct line started ringing, which meant someone had requested him specifically. He cursed quietly and picked up his headset. It was a fight not grit the words out through his teeth.   
  
A. Professional.  
  
“Hello Sugar, this is Constantine. What’s your fantasy?”   
  
It was a woman he knew only as ‘Mary,’ though she’d made it pretty clear that it was an alias. He looked at the clock. Mary was a simple one. She wanted him to listen while she touched herself. She liked the illusion that he was playing along, which meant that all Rick had to do was sit there and pant into the phone until she was finished. It was usually an easy twenty to thirty minutes, but at that moment it was torture.   
  
He hoped for a brief second that he might get lucky and that having to deal with her would kill his boner, but not having to think of anything to say or suggest meant that his mind could wander, and it conveniently kept wandering back to the beautiful fucking moans that came out of Daryl’s mouth when something felt really _really_ good to him.   
  
He could almost still hear Daryl’s quiet labored panting, the breathy sounds of his male ecstasy filtering in through the speakers and into Rick's ears. If he imagined hard enough, he could almost convince himself that he had actually heard the distinctive sounds that a hand made rubbing up and down a cock somewhere amongst all the other sounds the other man had made.   
  
His cock ached in his pants, especially with how he’d moved it to conceal his erection. He prayed Mary was quick about getting off so he could go get off too.   
  
That delicious way Daryl had moaned “fuck” when he’d found the sweet spot.   
  
Rick's cock throbbed with need. He groaned audibly, willing the woman on the phone to fucking finish already.   
  
The vague mental image of a man cumming all over his own face.   
  
Rick palmed over his cock in an attempted to quiet it. He'd never hated a woman moaning in his ear so much in his entire life.   
  
“Thank you so much, daddy,” Mary said finally, gasping softly and happily in a way that was nothing like Daryl’s fucked-out panting after he finished. Rick nearly sighed in relief.   
  
“You’re welcome, baby girl,” Rick said back. He barely registered her good-bye before the line went dead, and he stood up so quickly his desk chair almost toppled backwards.   
  
“Martinez, I’m taking my break,” he said, swinging by his office on the way to the bathroom that was conveniently located down the hall by the elevators. They used to share it with another office on their floor, but it had been vacant for a couple months after the lawyers that leased it had gone belly up.   
  
“Gotchya,” he said with a nod. “Hey, Rick.”   
  
Rick stopped walking. Goddammit, was everyone conspiring against him and his aching dick?   
  
“Yeah?” he asked, leaning back around the door frame.   
  
“I noticed that guy called again. Are you still okay with it? I-” The phone on his desk rang and he held one finger up toward Rick before picking it up, giving them the usual spiel before transferring them to a hold line where one of the other guys would take it. “I don’t want you to feel uncomfortable. You’re one of the best operators I’ve got.”   
  
Rick nearly laughed.   
  
“Money’s money,” Rick said. “Doesn’t bother me.”   
  
“Just making sure. Enjoy your break.”   
  
Rick nodded and forced himself to walk at a normal pace to the bathroom. As soon as he slipped inside, he shut the door behind him, locked it, and tested the knob just to make sure. Then, he plopped down into the plush floral chair in the corner. He’d helped a woman in the lawyer’s office carry it from her car to the elevator one day, and when they’d vacated the building, it had stayed.   
  
He never understood the need for a chair in a one-person bathroom, but he wasn’t complaining now while he ripped open his jeans. He immediately grasped himself inside his underwear, rubbing his erection desperately for a solid thirty seconds before he even bothered to pull his cock free. He would’ve finished entirely in his pants if it wouldn’t have meant him having to sit in his own sticky briefs until quitting time.   
  
His body responded quickly, completely on edge from being forced to wait. He balled his left hand into a fist, shoving the side of it into his mouth and biting down to muffle any groans that escaped. He rubbed faster, his only goal cumming so that he could go about the rest of his day in relative peace.   
  
In the back of his mind, Daryl’s moans played over and over again like a song on repeat. Rick arched up out of the chair, tugging, tugging, tugging. Somehow Daryl’s voice overlapped his mental images of several men getting the life fucked out of them. He regretted not asking Daryl what he looked like too. What color was his hair? How long was it? Were his eyes brown or blue? Or a gorgeous shade of green?  
  
Right then he looked a lot like the boy with the snake tattooed on his thigh, arguably Rick’s favorite of all the men he’d watched get railed or jerk themselves off or finger their own assholes or… Shit, he’d watched a lot of porn the night before.   
  
He imagined Snake Boy moaning and groaning and panting and… He took his fist out of his mouth and reached down to touch his balls, rolling them just like he’d told Daryl he liked.   
  
“Rick.” He tried his best to imagine it in Daryl’s voice, but he knew his fantasy didn’t quite match up, that until he heard Daryl really moan his name, he’d be lost. So he stuck with moans instead, imagining Snake Boy’s legs wrapped tightly around his hips while he plunged endlessly into the tight heat of his body.   
  
He stroked faster, the distinct sounds of friction from his hand and his clothes rustling against the fabric of the chair filling the tiny room. He put his hand back in his mouth to muffle the sound of his panting as he neared his hurried completion.   
  
He knew he was going to have to jerk off properly later at home to really satisfy himself, but he was pretty damn close to something that sort of resembled relief. He bit into the meaty pad of his thumb and milked himself roughly until cum spurted and oozed out of his cock, dotting the bathroom tile and running down his length to pool on the side of his hand where he still gripped himself loosely. He waited until his erection finished twitching, and then he brought his hand to his mouth and slurped it clean.   
  
A quick sweep of the tile floor with some industrial brown paper towels and a rinse of his hands and face at the sink, and Rick was ready to finish his workday, fully aware that he was going to spend a hefty amount of time later that evening watching Snake Boy get railed while he Pollocked the underside of his computer desk and tried his hardest not to think about Daryl. Or to think about him, depending on the mood.   
  
No, not think. Daryl could only ever be a customer to him, and that was how it had to be. Right?   
  
He splashed a little more water on his face for good measure and headed back to the office.


	5. V

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Adding a **graphic depictions of violence tag.** Warning in case you don't check the tags again before reading a new chapter.

There was blood everywhere. In some vague part of the recesses of his mind, Daryl knew the human body held about a gallon and a half, but he’d never realized just how much that could really be when it was all over the place.  
  
Flecks of red stained his arms and his face, and he couldn’t decide what was worse—the steady drip of it from where his brother slumped over the half-wall between the kitchen and the living room or the way the living room carpet squelched around his feet next to the lifeless lump that had once been his father.  
  
It was a nightmare. Daryl knew it. There’d been a counselor back at the jail, some guy who volunteered a few hours a week to talk to the alcoholics in the drunk tank and the people like Daryl who were waiting for their day in court. He’d managed to help Daryl just enough to start recognizing when he was asleep. The only problem was that Daryl had never quite bridged the gap between knowing he was having a nightmare and making himself wake up. Which somehow made the nightmare even worse.  
  
It was one thing to relive that night over and over again in his sleep. It was another to know each agonizing thing that he was going to have to go through without being able to do a damn thing about it other than wait for it to be over.  
  
They hadn’t stopped when Will Dixon died. Daryl had always left that part out when he talked to the cops and to Harrison and to everyone else, including the counselor. He’d never been sure exactly who he was protecting and what from and why, but he never mentioned that part. How his dad had drawn his last breath and gone still, how he’d expected the room to fall eerily quiet, how it had for a brief second before one of them—Joe maybe?—had paused long enough to recognize that Will was gone and to laugh about it before he started up again. There was something even more sickening about all of them continuing to beat a corpse than there had been about watching them kill his father to begin with.  
  
And maybe Will Dixon had been the human equivalent of the liquid pool of putrefaction that gathers at the bottom of a Dairy Queen dumpster, but it was still too much even for a man like him.  
  
At least it was almost over.   
  
“We were never here,” Dwight said, pointing a finger in Daryl’s face. Behind him, Daryl couldn’t help but notice the crimson streaks crisscrossing the white wings of his brother’s biker vest. It was better though that his brain decided to focus on that than on the mess that had once been Merle’s face. Dwight turned to the rest of the gang, his form rigid and authoritative. “Let’s go.”  
  
In the corner of his eye, Daryl watched someone take one last horrible swing at the body on the living room floor. Then he woke up in his apartment, his eyes wet and his feet warm from the morning sun peeking too happily through the blinds.  
  
The clock on his phone told him it was a little after eight, which meant he could’ve slept for at least another hour before he had to get ready for work. Which also told him he had a little less than two hours to pull himself back together—the nightmares always made him feel the slightest bit ripped apart.  
  
A few flips through the apps he had—Facebook (his aunt Linda had insisted), weather, some stupid hunting game. Nothing was enough to distract him. He dialed the phone line without even really thinking about it.  
  
“Can I get Constantine?”  
  
“Sure. He might still be fixing his coffee so give him a minute.”  
  
“Right,” Daryl said, chewing on his fingernail. Why the hell had he called a phone sex line at 8:20 in the morning when he wasn’t remotely close to any mood resembling sexual?  
  
“Hello Sugar, what’s y-”  
  
“Don’t,” Daryl said.  
  
“Daryl,” the voice said, sounding almost happy to hear from him. “Good morning.”  
  
“I don’t want…” Daryl sighed. “I don’t know why I called.”  
  
“That’s okay,” Clint said. “You’ve got nine and a half more minutes for me to help you figure that out before it starts costing you.”  
  
Daryl rubbed the space between his eyebrows. What  _did_ he want?   
  
“Clint,” he said, wincing at how weak and pathetic his voice sounded.  
  
“Yes, Daryl?”  
  
“Tell me a story. Not a sexy one, a… anything else.” Daryl laid back on the futon and wrapped up in his blankets.  
  
“A story?”  
  
“Yeah. Doesn’t even have to be a good one. Just talk.”  
  
The line fell quiet. Daryl squirmed uncomfortably in the silence, dangerously close to thinking again.  
  
“You know, when I was a little boy, I nearly lost my left leg. Being stupid, you know. Like kids'll be,” Clint said. “See, there was this cow in Mrs. O’Leary’s pasture, had a spot on its back end that looked like a hand print. So of course everyone used to dare each other to go smack the damn thing on the ass.”  
  
Clint paused, and Daryl heard him take a sip of coffee.  
  
“Which meant of course that Nico had to dare Shane and Shane had to dare me. Just the way of the world.”  
  
“She kick you in the leg?”  
  
“Nope,” Clint said. “The cow was a real sweetheart actually considering she had a billion idiot boys slapping her on the rear every day. The barbwire fence that separated us idiot boys from the cow wasn’t as kind. Caught my jeans on the way over and the next thing I knew I was bleeding all over the grass.”  
  
Daryl rubbed a hand over his face, his stomach churning unpleasantly. He dug the sleep out of the corners of his eyes with two fingers, pressing a little too hard until they throbbed once in their sockets.    
  
“Clint...” There was that pathetic voice again.  
  
“Yeah, Daryl?”  
  
“I might need a different story.”  
  
“Yeah, sure,” he said calmly and without a trace of annoyance. Another sip of coffee. “Let me think. Did you do senior pranks at your high school?”  
  
“Yeah,” Daryl said. “I mean, I didn’t, but the other kids did.”  
  
“Yeah, our senior prank was covering the football field in those little pink flamingos. Thing is, some people, and by some people, I mean Shane-”  
  
“Kind of a pattern here, Clint.”  
  
“Yeah, Shane was a bad influence,” Rick said. “Thing was he didn’t think the flamingo prank was a good enough legacy for our graduating class. So he gets the bright idea to turn the principal’s office into a garden complete with a fish pond. He saved everything he made at his after school job for a month. Stopped taking girls to the movies. Stopped sneaking off campus at lunch to buy hamburgers at the gas station.”  
  
“How much he end up with?”  
  
“He never said. But he showed up at my house one night around 1 a.m. with a truck load full of plants, potting soil, and plastic bags full of fish from the pet store. In what I can only call a momentary lapse in sanity, I got in the truck with him.”  
  
“You pull it off?” Daryl asked. He’d never been invited to participate in the senior prank, but he and his brother had spent one whole night relocating all of Mr. Poole’s chickens from their coop to the inside of his screened in porch.  
  
“We’re getting there. Hold on,” Clint said. “So we get to the school. Shane turns his headlights off and drives behind back all stealth-like. It was an old school, so we still had those old-fashioned latch windows. Somehow he managed to jimmy the one leading to the principal's office open. It never occurred to either of us that it might be easier for one of us to leave the office and go open one of the doors to the school. So instead he backs the truck up under the window and we spend an hour passing stuff through it. When we’ve got it all in there, Shane whips out his master plan, a little ink doodle on a crinkled piece of notebook paper with some measurements and some quick math on the approximate square footage of the office.”  
  
“He hands me a box and tells me to set it up in front of the desk. It’s a little blow up kiddie pool. He didn’t bring a pump or anything, so I’ve gotta sit there on the edge of the desk huffing into the damn thing until it’s full. At that point, I’m already counting on not getting much sleep. Finally, I get this thing set up, and Shane’s already got potting soil a few inches deep behind the desk when I realize we don’t have any damn water.”  
  
Daryl managed to let out a puff of air—the closest he could get to laugh—imagining Clint sitting there on the desk that staring down at an empty kid’s swimming pool while he tried to catch his breath.  
  
“So I ask him, you know, ‘Shane, did you bring a hose or something?’ The next thing out of his mouth is ‘shit,’ which is always a good sign when you’re breaking and entering. There’s plastic bags of little silver fish all over the desk waiting for a home, and we’ve got no way to put water in the _pond_. The nearest bathroom isn’t far, but we’ve got nothing big enough to carry water in, so Shane decided we’re going to take the swimming pool down there, set it on the floor, and somehow fill it up. We got halfway there, walked past the teacher’s lounge, and Shane stops in his tracks, tells me to take the pool back to the office. I asked him what his plan is, and he just smiles at me, cocky like he’s got the world all figured out. Whatever. I take the pond back, start working on some of the bags of dirt.”  
  
“So what was his plan then?”  
  
“Right. The next thing I know, Shane’s standing in the doorway with one of those giant jugs they keep around for the water cooler in the lounge. It hasn’t been opened yet. He popped the sucker open, drains it into the swimming pool. It’s not enough to fill it up, but it’s enough the fish can survive in it for a little while. So he dumps them all in and throws in a pinch of food. Then it’s time to garden. We filled that office up with a good three inches of soil and stuffed petunias everywhere. Head back out through the window. Shane stole the empty water bottle as a souvenir because he was an idiot. We went home. I snuck back into my bedroom.”  
  
“You guys get busted?” Daryl asked.  
  
“Not by the school. Everyone there kinda knew Shane had probably done it. He was the only person who had the guile to. But he somehow managed not to brag about it, and they didn’t have anything on him. I got busted at home though. My daddy was the sheriff, noticed the ridiculous amount of what seemed to be potting soil on my shoes, put two and two together quick. He yelled at me for about an hour and nearly banned me from taking my girlfriend to the prom or anywhere else, but he kept it quiet since we hadn’t actually caused any permanent damage. So we got away with it and our class went down in school legends just like Shane wanted.”  
  
Daryl chewed on his bottom lip, thinking about the two boys sneaking around the dark office of some old building somewhere, landscaping over ancient linoleum.  
  
“What happened to the fish?” he asked, and Clint laughed quietly.  
  
“Damn school carnival was that weekend. They all got bagged up and given away. They planted the petunias out front of the school too. Even used most of the soil they scooped out.”    
  
Daryl shook his head and let things go quiet for another second. He wondered briefly what school would have been like if he'd had more friends than his dipshit brother.   
  
“Hey, Daryl...”

“Yeah?”  
  
“You okay?”  
  
He took a minute to answer, really thinking it over. There was no way the nightmare wouldn’t still bother him, but he felt like a person again at least.  
  
“I am now. Mostly.”  
  
“Good. That’s real good.”  
  
“I gotta go though. Work. Need money to do stupid shit like call phone sex lines without actually wanting any phone sex.”  
  
“It’s not stupid,” Clint said. “Actually, it happens pretty often.”  
  
“Does it? Or are you just bullshittin to make me feel better?”  
  
“It does,” Clint said. “Sometimes people just need someone to talk to. And I don’t bullshit you, Daryl. I’ve had to pretend to like a lot of shit I don’t like, but I haven’t had to pretend anything with... Hell, I even told you when I wore the same jeans twice.”  
  
“I hope you aren’t wearin ‘em again.”  
  
“Regular blues today.”  
  
“Good. I’ll talk to you soon, Clint. Thanks for the story.”  
  
There was a brief pause before Clint spoke again.  
  
“Rick,” he said quietly, like he didn’t want anyone to hear him.  
  
“What?” Daryl asked.  
  
“My real name is Rick. Have a good day at work, Daryl.”  
  
“Thanks, Rick," he said, testing out the name on his lips. It felt better than Clint. More right somehow. "Bye."   
  
"Bye."   
  
Daryl hung up his phone, his heart pounding in his ears. 


	6. VI

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry guys. I've been way busy with work stuff, but I'm going to try and get some sort of regular schedule for updates going so that you're not waiting 20 centuries. I'm still here. ♥

It wasn’t the first time Rick had ever looked down the barrel of a gun. He was trained for this. Trained to keep his cool even while the guy looked at him with a black and yellow grin and wide, crazed eyes.   
  
“You don’t want to do that,” Rick said calmly.    
  
“Little pig, little pig, let me in,” he said with a high whistling laugh, grabbing his crotch vulgarly. “I’ll huff and I’ll puff...” Gun cocked.   
  
“Your life will be over,” Rick said. He was properly scared now even if he was holding onto his wits. This guy had clearly been using for a very long time, and he wasn’t sure he even had a brain left to reason with.   
  
“So will yours,” he said, adding a series of too-accurate pig squeals onto the end of the words. It was the most disconcerted Rick had ever felt. Something inside of him squirmed viscerally.   
  
He didn’t have a chance to answer before the first shot went off, slamming full-force into layers of thick Kevlar. Rick assessed the situation, gasping for breath. It had hit the vest. It had hit the vest and he was going to be okay. Shane hadn’t managed to catch up yet—his bigger frame was more equipped for strength than speed. Still, that meant no one else but him was in immediate danger.   
  
He was going to be okay.   
  
But the gun kept firing, and the druggie kept squealing, each one pitched higher and higher, hauntingly shrill in Rick’s skull.   
  
“To the slaughter, to the slaughter, to the slaughter...”   
  
Rick managed to count the bullets despite how fast they fired. One shot left. One shot left and he was still alive. He could see Shane’s unmistakable form fast approaching, an unstoppable object ready to slam full-force into the man firing on him.   
  
“Rick!”   
  
The last shot went off, and Rick woke up in his apartment, sweating and shaking from head to toe.   
  
It wasn’t real, not that time. He groped for the lamp on his bedside table. He hated being in the fucking dark after one of those things. It was part of the reason he’d moved to the city though he’d never told anyone that—the promise of a world that was never truly without light.   
  
He closed his eyes and forced his breath deeper in his lungs, pressing his back against the headboard, feeling the solidness of it. He was there. In Atlanta. Miles and years away from that day. He muttered quietly to himself between breaths.   
  
“A-academy students should look professional and well-groomed at all times. Black cargo slacks and a uniform shirt complete with all appropriate patches and insignias will be worn to all classes unless otherwise specified by an instructor. Everything should be clean and neatly pressed.”   
  
The mandatory counseling he received after he woke up had given him this. Dr. Cloyd had asked him to think of something he knew well and to walk her through the steps. Taking apart and cleaning his Colt wasn’t an option for him after everything, but he had spent months having his police academy’s uniform requirements drilled into him by instructor after instructor.   
  
He recounted them all for her, everything from head-to-toe, and she’d told him to recount them to himself in situations like this. He took another deep breath.   
  


“Shirts should be tucked in, and belts should be worn. Both black leather and black canvas are acceptable. When worn, duty belts and all attachments should be clean and in good shape.”   
  
He focused on the mattress molded to his body beneath him, on the sound of a city bus moving by outside. This was another one of her tips—to focus on his surroundings, to remind his brain where he was.   
  
“Boots should be clean and polished. Laces should not be frayed. No jewelry should be worn with the exception of watches and wedding rings, which should be taken off during physical activities for safety.”   
  
The refrigerator hummed quietly in the kitchen. He could hear the faint thump of a beat from somewhere else in the building. A party maybe. He felt calmer. He still felt like shit, but he felt a lot less like his mind and body had been torn in two.   
  
“Hair should be kept clean and neat. Students with longer hair must keep it pulled back and out of their eyes.”   
  
Rick finally reached over for his phone, checking the time. It was a little before three in the morning, and he had work the next day plus a drive out to the country when he got off to pick up Carl for the weekend. He was going to need his sleep. Besides, he’d likely feel better in the morning. If there was one thing good about his nightmares, they almost never hit twice in one night.   
  
Breathing deeply, he sank back down into his bed and rolled over, pulling a pillow tight against his chest and closing his eyes. He slept with the light on. 

* * *

  
Work was predictably hard for Daryl after two days off in a row. The crew was working on putting up sheet rock inside of a building they’d been working on, which meant hours of lifting and holding his arms up and repeat. His manager was notorious about forgetting break times without being reminded of them, and Daryl had never been the type to open his mouth. He’d worked straight through to “lunch” at 2 p.m., and he was on his third hour straight without stopping again by 5:30.   
  
“Duck,” Aaron said, strolling by with a large piece of dry wall hoisted above his head. Daryl’s eyes darted automatically to where the other man’s upper arms bulged out of his plaid sleeves before he slipped out of the way. “Can you nail this?” Aaron asked, jerking his head in the direction of the closest nail gun.

Daryl nodded and picked it up, checking the air hose for kinks and stepping around Aaron. He passed the gun under Aaron’s arms, careful to keep it pointed away from both of them. The first nail went in with a loud pop.   
  
“What are your plans after work?” Aaron asked, right as Daryl shot a second nail in.   
  


“What?”   
  
“What are you doing after we get off?”   
  
Daryl knew what he had intended to do after work, and it involved checking his bank balance to see how many minutes he could get away with putting into a phone call with Rick. His aching body told him he was fucking ridiculous for it. It wasn’t like he was even going to have the strength left to jerk off by the time he got home. His arms felt like one of those damn inflatables outside of a car dealership, and his back was tight and sore.   
  
“Hot shower and a cold beer, I guess,” Daryl said before finishing the line of nails. Aaron dropped his arms and shook them out, already reaching for dry wall screws and a drill so he could follow up on Daryl’s tack job.   
  
“Thought you might want to watch that movie,” he said.   
  
“What movie?”   
  
“Pacific Rim. We can order a pizza.”  
  
“Oh,” Daryl said, chewing on his lip. He thought it over. If he watched a movie with Aaron, then he wouldn’t be able to make any phone calls. Then again, if he watched a movie with Aaron, then he wouldn’t be wasting money calling a phone sex line when he was probably too tired to even get it up. He sighed. Aaron frowned slightly.   
  
“Nothing weird, Daryl. Just pizza and a movie.”   
  
“What? Oh. Nah,” Daryl said, shaking his head. “Didn’t think it was a date or nothin.”   
  
“Good,” Aaron said. “You’re one of the only guys on the crew who doesn’t treat me like I’m contagious. I don’t want to lose that.”   
  
“Yeah,” Daryl said, handing him another screw. Truthfully, Aaron was probably his only real friend in Atlanta. Tobin was okay too, but he had a wife and a family that took up most of his time. “Me neither.”   
  
“So?”   
  
“Yeah. You can come by. Ain’t done the dishes in a few days though and I ain’t gonna.”   
  
Aaron looked back at him and smiled softly.   
  
“Me neither.” 

* * *

  
Pacific Rim wasn’t even over before Daryl decided it was one of his favorite movies. The robots. The fights. That Charlie Hunnam guy without a shirt on. And that Pentecost guy too. If Rick had asked him for a fake name to use on calls now, then Daryl would probably have at least three easy answers.

He traced the lines disappearing into Raleigh Becket’s sweats, taking a little too long to realize that the screen wasn’t moving anymore. Clearing his throat, he glanced over at Aaron.   
  
“Bathroom break and another beer,” he said, standing up off of Daryl’s futon. It squeaked with the movement. Daryl would’ve been embarrassed, but he and Aaron had the same job, which meant he probably wasn’t sitting on some $1000 designer sofa at his apartment either.   
  
“Could use another slice of pizza,” Daryl said. He glanced at the screen again. “That pause strategic?”   
  
Aaron shrugged innocently and disappeared into the tiny bathroom. Shaking his head, Daryl stood up too and crossed the three or so steps to the kitchen where he stuck a piece of meat lover’s into his mouth before swiping two more beers out of the fridge.   
  
“Thanks,” Aaron said, accepting a cold beer after he sat back down. “I owe you a six pack at this rate.”   
  
“You got the pizza. Ain’t like it’s some hipster craft bullshit that costs $12.99 a bottle. We’re even.”   
  
“Fair enough,” Aaron said, reaching for the remote to unpause the movie. Daryl settled back in. Aaron shifted next to him, laughing awkwardly at the squeaking futon while he got comfortable. Daryl briefly reconsidered whether or not he should be embarrassed, but then Aaron made the decision for him by accident.   
  
“What’s this?” Aaron asked.   
  
Daryl looked over and watched him pull a piece of dingy paper out of from under the pillow he’d been trying to shift behind his back.   
  
“No,” Daryl said, a little too late. Aaron had already unfolded it. A faded cowboy stood proud on the page. 1-900-2-Dial-a-Stud stuck out like a neon sign on a desert night. Daryl’s felt his face warm instantly.   
  
Some little voice told him that it didn’t matter, that Aaron wasn’t going to give a fuck if he was into phone sex with dudes. But that didn’t make him feel any less queasy.   
  
“Hmm.”   
  
“It’s...” Daryl trailed off. It’s what? What else could it really be other than what it obviously was? He kept the damn thing hidden under his pillow for fuck’s sake.   
  
“Thinking about a career change?” Aaron asked, but it felt more like an offer than something he actually believed. He was giving Daryl an out, another option besides the truth. Daryl was quiet for a very long time, thinking it over. He’d never done this before. He’d never told fucking anyone besides Rick, and Rick didn’t exactly count.   
  
“Think you know I ain’t,” Daryl said quietly.

Aaron paused the movie again.   
  
“Guess it’s nice to know you ain’t the only one at work,” Daryl said, willing the blush on his cheeks to fade. It was out in the open. Daryl liked calling phone sex lines. Aaron liked dick too. No big deal. He took a long swig of his beer.   
  
“I don’t want to worry you, Daryl, but...”   
  
“But what?”   
  
“I sort of already knew.”   
  
“What?” Daryl’s heart sped up. Shit. Shit shit shit. If Aaron knew, then who else knew and how did they know and _fuck_.

“I mean, I didn’t know for sure. I had a feeling, but like I said, don’t worry,” Aaron said. “You aren’t exactly flaming, and they’re pretty oblivious. If Jim hadn’t caught me making out with that cute architect way back, they probably wouldn’t know about me either.”   
  
Daryl didn’t say anything to that. He exhaled and took another long drink.   
  
“Have you called it?” Aaron asked. “The number?”   
  
“Yeah,” Daryl said softly.   
  
“Is it any good?”   
  
All of the unease in Daryl’s stomach instantly morphed into jealousy.  
  
“No,” he blurted out, before realizing how stupid that sounded and correcting himself. “I mean, it’s okay, I guess. Expensive.” It was one thing to think about Rick maybe talking to a bunch of women all day, but not a guy, especially not a guy he knew. “I think it’s mainly for women,” Daryl added. “Didn’t seem to know what to...” Daryl trailed off. “Yeah.”   
  
He was back to blushing again.   
  
“That’s unfortunate,” Aaron said. “Though I doubt this cute little cowboy works there anyway.”   
  
“Don’t think he does,” Daryl said.

“Pity,” Aaron said, tilting his head and staring at the model.   
  
“Guess so,” Daryl said. “Ain’t my type.”   
  
“You have a type?” Aaron asked, refolding the paper and setting it on the coffee table.   
  
“Yeah,” Daryl said. “Maybe. I dunno. Never really got to be myself before.”   
  
Aaron nodded like that made perfect sense to him. It probably did.   
  
“I’m willing to help you figure that out.”   
  
“What?” Daryl asked, sounding a little alarmed. Aaron laughed.   
  
“I mean we’ll keep up the movie nights. I’ll take you through my hot guy collection one week at a time. We’ll take some mental notes. You know, for science.”   
  
Daryl huffed through his nose and rolled his eyes, but the corners of his lips curled up slightly anyway.   
  
“You’re doing pretty good this week,” Daryl said without making eye contact.   
  
“Charlie?” Aaron asked. “He is...”  
  
“Not too bad,” Daryl finished. “Don’t think he’s my type either but I wouldn’t turn him down. Pentecost and that asshole kid’s dad though...”  
  
“Herc? Chuck’s dad?”   
  
“Mhm.”   
  
“So you’re into foxy dads then?” Aaron teased. Daryl considered it.   
  
“Shit,” he said, taking a drink. “There goes your science experiment.”   
  
“Well hold on now,” Aaron said. “You can’t just throw out a theory and not test it. That’s terrible science.”   
  
“Well, then do you have any more hot older guy movies?” Daryl asked, automatically feeling ridiculous. It wasn’t like he wasn’t an older guy himself. Though the hot part probably didn’t apply. “Or hot guys my age movies, I guess.”   
  
Aaron grinned at him.   
  
“That won’t be a problem.”   
  
“Don’t gotta tell you not to mention this at work, right? Don’t think I could put up with their shit like you do.”   
  
“I don’t make it a habit of telling secrets that aren’t mine to tell,” Aaron said.    
  
“Hit ‘play’ then,” Daryl said, nodding toward the frozen movie. “Ain’t got all night.”   
  
Aaron smiled at him and picked the remote up off the futon.   
  
  
  



	7. VII

Daryl shifted impatiently from one foot to the other before wiping his nose unceremoniously with his dingy plaid sleeve. His allergies had been giving him hell all day, and the line at the CVS checkout was about five deep. All he wanted was to get some medicine, go home, and pass out on the futon.   
  
“Does no one else work here?” some lady asked from behind him. The college girl at register pretended she couldn’t hear. In response, the woman sighed loudly, her breath raking uncomfortably across the back of Daryl’s neck. He sneezed, the headache behind his eye giving an angry throb.   
  
“I can take the next person,” someone called. The lady behind Daryl swooped to the second register before anyone else could even think about moving. Now it was his turn to sigh. Entitled bitch.  
  
“Go on ahead of me, sweetie.”   
  
It took Daryl a second to register that the black woman in front of him was smiling kindly in his direction, waving her hand at the open counter. He felt way too much like shit for it to even occur to him to protest.   
  
“Go on, you look like death.”   
  
“Thanks,” he muttered, barely managing to get his elbow up over his nose, just in the nick of time to catch a sneeze before it could go all over the exhausted-looking cashier and the counter. “Allergy meds. Cheapest you got.”   
  
“Anything else?” she asked, pulling a little box from the shelf behind her. Daryl opened his mouth to say no before the little display next to the register caught his eye. Okay, new plan: get some medicine, go home, let Rick talk him through a quick jerk off before the drugs knocked him the hell out. Hell, he probably wouldn’t even go over the free ten minutes.

He grabbed the first package of hands-free earphones his fingers touched and plopped them over onto the counter. He was already home with a pill down his throat before he realized they were neon purple.   
  
Whatever got the job done, he guessed, splaying out on the futon. He called work first, making it as quick as possible. He hated taking a day off. He had plenty of sick pay racked up since he hardly ever used it, but something about staying home made his skin crawl, like without him there they’d realize they didn’t really need him to begin with. Then he’d be out of a job and for a middle-aged who didn’t even have a high school diploma, opportunities were slim.   
  
“Hope you feel better by tomorrow,” Tobin said. “Local honey’s supposed to be good for that. Wife won’t shut up about it.”   
  
“Yeah thanks,” Daryl said, hanging up the phone. He didn’t hesitate before redialing. He didn’t have time to waste.   
  
“Constantine,” he said. The first hold advertisement got cut off before he could even tell which one it was.   
  
“Hello Sugar, thi-”  
  
“Hey, Rick,” Daryl said, his voice already starting to slur as the drug-induced drowsiness hit him.  
  
“Daryl?”   
  
“Mhm.”   
  
“Are you drunk?”   
  
“Allergy pill,” Daryl said. “Felt like shit all mornin.”   
  
“Want me to make you feel better, Sugar?” Rick asked, making his voice rough and syrupy. Daryl felt his body react almost instantly despite the heaviness creeping into his eyelids. “Or do you just want to talk?”   
  
“Bought headphones,” Daryl muttered before wiping his nose with a brown paper napkin. He wished he’d thought to buy a real pack of tissues. His stash of old fast food napkins was dwindling quick.   
  
“Did you?”   
  
“Mhm. Accidentally grabbed purple ones, but fuck it.”   
  
“Maybe purple is your color, Daryl.”  
  
“Speakin’ of colors. What are you wearing, Rick?”   
  
“Smooth,” Rick said, chuckling quietly.   
  
“Shut up.”   
  
“Don’t think you called me because you want me to shut up. Dark jeans. Blue and black plaid button-up. Boots. Think it’s your turn.”   
  
Daryl laughed quietly.   
  
“What’s so funny?”   
  
“You wanna know what I’m wearin?” Daryl asked.   
  
“Asked, didn’t I?”   
  
“Ain’t wearin’ a damn thing.”   
  
There was a long pause. Or maybe it was a brief pause and the antihistamines running through Daryl’s system made it drag on.   
  
“You there?”   
  
Rick cleared his throat. “Nothing?”  
  
“Guess I’m wearin purple headphones. Ain’t really coverin nothin with those though.”   
  
Another pause.  
  
“Where are you?” Rick asked.   
  
“Couch,” Daryl said. “Might wanna hurry it up. Damn pill’s gonna knock me out.”   
  
“Too bad I can’t suck you off until you fall asleep,” Rick said.   
  
“Can give you my address,” Daryl joked, the words running together. He really did sound trashed.   
  
“You’ve got no idea how tempting that sounds, Daryl,” Rick said. “But let’s talk about me breaking the rules on a day when you’d be awake long enough for me to really play with you. Right now, let’s try to make you cum all over yourself. Sound good to you?”   
  
“You breakin’ the rules sounds better, but I guess I’ll take the other thing,” Daryl said. And damn did he wish the other man was really serious and not just trying to help him get his rocks off, because he would personally break about a million rules for that chance.   
  
“How long do you think you have?”  
  
“Few minutes,” Daryl said. “Promise you’ll hang up though. No takin advantage of some sick drugged up asshole to rack up your pay check.”   
  
“Wouldn’t do that,” Rick said. “Especially not to my favorite customer. You already hard for me, Daryl?”   
  
“Was hard the second you started using your damn sex voice on me, Rick. We gonna do this or what?” Daryl asked. His eyes were starting to droop past the point where he could fight to keep them open, and he really didn’t want to waste the opportunity of an unexpected day off even if it was because he was sick.   
  
“You’re more talkative when you’re a sick drugged up asshole,” Rick said. “Wish it was under different circumstances, but I kind of like it. Spit in your palm, Sugar. Nice and loud and filthy for me.”   
  
Daryl did.   
  
“That’s real good, Daryl. Real good. Go on and start rubbing yourself. However you like it most.”   
  
“Hey Rick...”  
  
“Mhm?”  
  
“Know it’s just a job and wouldn’t be real, but can you, you know, pretend and shit?” Daryl asked.  
  
“Pretend what, Sugar?”   
  
“That you’re doin it too.”   
  
“Sure, Daryl,” Rick said. “You go on and start while I get my jeans undone.”   
  
Obediently, Daryl wrapped his hand around his cock and started stroking, hurried and quick in the way he knew would get him from point A to B as quick as possible. Half-unconscious from the allergy meds, he couldn’t even dream about holding back the low moan that slipped out between his lips.   
  
But even though he had asked for it, Rick’s returned sound was an unexpected element, floating into his ears like warm brown sugar and making his body ache with want. His cock jerked in his fist. And, fuck, Daryl still hadn’t come to a conclusion when it came to Rick’s request that he consider whether penetration was something he’d want or not. But with in the drowsy haze of the allergy medicine and with Rick panting hotly in his ears, he thought if the subject had come up right then, he’d have at least let Rick try.  
  
“Fuck, that’s sexy as hell,” Daryl said. Rick groaned harder for his benefit.   
  
“So are you, Daryl,” Rick said, breathing heavily. And it was so believable. The rational part of Daryl’s brain buried deep in the fog wondered briefly how many times he’d had to pretend in his line of work, because he was really damn good at it. The irrational part showed him his hazy mental image of Rick in a desk chair jerking it in time with his own hurried strokes. He liked the irrational part better.   
  
“I’d let you,” Daryl said, his mouth finally catching up with his previous line of thought. “I think.”   
  
“You’d let me what?” Rick asked.   
  
“I’d let you fuck me. You asked if I’d do the whole...stuff in my ass thing before. Think I’d give it a shot with you.”  
  
Rick went quiet. No words, no fake pants or groans, nothing. Daryl worried that he’d maybe gone too far. Daryl wasn’t entirely sure what the etiquette was behind paid phone sex, but maybe telling your operator you would probably let him put his dick in your ass for real was too far.   
  
“Well, shit,” Rick said.   
  
“Fuck, I’m sorry,” Daryl said.   
  
“Shh,” Rick said. “You didn’t do anything wrong, Daryl. Just keep rubbing. Tell me how good it feels.”   
“Feels kinda weird,” Daryl said, looking down through the small slit of vision he had left. He wasn’t sure if he was even awake anymore. “Bein so sleepy and doin it. Doesn’t feel real.”   
  
“But it feels good too?” Rick asked. “That’s all I want, Daryl. I like making you feel good. And what you said earlier…I think I’d like to try that too.”   
  
Maybe he was asleep after all, his unconscious mind filling in the blanks with things he really wanted to hear.  
  
“Think I’m gonna..” It was hard to keep his arm going anymore, but he was so close. Too close to stop even if he was dreaming. Maybe he was still rubbing himself physically but his mind had checked out. Maybe the real Rick had already hung up on him.   
  
“Me too,” Rick said, the words sounding strained. He was back to pretending for Daryl. Like he’d asked. “C’mon, Daryl. Let me hear you.”   
  
“Fuck,” Daryl said, trying to keep the momentum going just long enough to get there. “Don’t stop.” He wasn’t sure if he was talking to Rick or himself.   
  
“Won’t,” Rick said. “Not with you, Daryl. Not until you’re shaking and covered in both our cum.”

  
“Jesus,” Daryl said. And that was enough. His body let go, setting him adrift on some weird floaty high that he would never be able to properly describe. He moaned Rick’s name, long and louder than he should’ve. At the sound of “Daryl” being groaned back at him, he felt his orgasm streak his bare stomach. He was too tired to after his cock had stopped twitching to do anything but flop over onto the unmade futon.   
  
He fell asleep with the purple headphones still jammed in his ears.

* * *

  
Like Daryl, Rick didn’t care much for taking days off. It wasn’t so much that he feared he wasn’t needed. Martinez had made it abundantly clear that he never wanted to lose Rick under any circumstances. It was more that when he called in sick, he only got compensated a base hourly rate from whatever they made in ad revenue. A generous allowance given that they were contract laborers and Martinez didn’t have to give them shit in the way of benefits at all. But still way less money than Rick made at his desk. On top of that, not being available when his loyal clients called meant running the risk of upsetting them.   
  
But even with all of that, there was no way he was going to be able to sit at a desk for the rest of the day. Smoothly talking woman after woman off after Daryl had dropped the ‘I’d let you fuck me’ bomb? Not a snowball’s chance in a Georgia summer.   
  
“Hey,” Rick said, leaning around the door frame of Cesar’s office.   
  
“What’s up?”   
  
“Think I’m gonna cut out early,” Rick said. “Migraine.”  
  
The only good thing about literally taking a bullet to the head was that he could play the migraine card anytime and people weren’t inclined to argue. Not that he didn’t get headaches constantly. It was unavoidable. Bullet fragments they were too afraid to remove and the metal plate holding the top of his skull together saw to that.   
  
“Sure thing,” Martinez said. “See you tomorrow.”   
  
“See ya.”   
  
Getting back to his apartment was hell. Rick lived a reasonable walking distance from work, which meant he usually didn’t bother driving. With rush hour traffic in Atlanta, he generally made it a hell of a lot faster on foot anyway.   
  
But he didn’t usually have a boner to contend with while he walked home either. No amount of unsexy thoughts seemed to be able to shake Daryl’s voice on permanent replay in his brain telling him he’d let him fuck him. Or try.   
  
When he finally made it home and locked the door behind him, he had a second to realize how fucked up it was that a client had managed to get into his head like that. But he had the computer on and headphones jammed into his ears before he could really explore the thought. He couldn’t type in the address to his new favorite Web site fast enough.   
  
Rick’s fingers hovered over the keyboard, a blinking line sitting in the search bar waiting for his command. As many times as he’d thought about sex on his walk home, he hadn’t thought to pick his poison when it came to the porn he’d get off to. On a filthy little whim, he typed in the name ‘Daryl’ just to see if anything came up.   
  
‘Did you mean: Darrell?’  
  
Sure, why the fuck not. Rick clicked.   
  
‘Porn Star Darrell Cumming Fingerfucks His Tight Hole’  
  
Well, that would certainly work.  
  
The video started on a close up shot of three fingers already working their way in and out of whoever the fuck Darrell Cumming was. Rick hastily undid his jeans. Snaking his hand inside to grip himself, he started stroking, not in the mood for anything but getting himself there as quick as physically possible.   
  
“Go on,” Rick said quietly. “Fuck yourself for me, Daryl.”   
  
The camera pulled in tighter. The porn star slipped three more fingers in, pulling his ass wide open. His moan sounded nothing like the ones Daryl floated into his ears, but they were still nice enough to make Rick bite his lip. He increased his speed, the desk rattling as he bumped it with his arm on every stroke.  
  
With six whole fingers, Darrell started fucking his hole. The closeness of the camera meant Rick could hear every slick slide of his digits in and out of his ass. God, he wanted to fucking do that. Put his fingers in Daryl’s ass and gape it the fuck open until he could literally see inside of him.   
  
Never mind he wasn’t sure Daryl could take that much abuse or what his ass even looked like. Or the rest of him for that matter. He wasn’t so sure it would make a difference anymore provided he was at least vaguely human-shaped.   
  
“C’mon,” Rick said. “You can go faster than that for me, Sugar.”   
  
It wasn’t quite on cue, but the porn star did speed up, fucking into himself with jerking twitches. He slid one hand completely out, the camera pulling back to show him stroking his cock and balls, trailing lube over his skin. The other hand, he pushed completely inside, contorting to fuck himself with entire fist.   
  
“Oh, fuck,” Rick grunted. Throwing his head back, he pressed his lips tightly together to muffle any sounds he was about to make. With a rumbling growl deep in the back of his throat, Rick came, spurting his orgasm all over the underside of the desk and the legs of his jeans. He slumped down into the chair, ripping the headphones out of his ears and panting as the euphoria of his climax settled into his bones.   
  
Too bad he couldn’t call Daryl himself in a bit. Take his time with round two. God, it would be heaven to actually be able to jerk off when he was talking to him. If their earlier call had been any indication, he was sure Daryl would love that too. 

But Daryl was passed out on a couch somewhere probably still covered in his own cum. Even if Rick did have his number, he wouldn’t be getting in touch with him that day. Rick sighed and sat back up, closing out the porn before getting up.   
  
Glancing at the pile of dirty socks he’d thrown in the general direction of the laundry closet, Rick opened the doors and grabbed the basket, figuring he may as well do something productive with his day if he was going to skip out on work just to jerk off.   
  
By bedtime, he had a pile of clean clothes, a computer desk in serious need of some Clorox, and far fewer regrets than he would have expected.

His last thought before he fell asleep was that he hoped Daryl felt much better.


	8. VIII

Daryl felt like death warmed over when he woke up. He was sweaty with dried cum plastered to his stomach, his hair was damp, and his right ear hurt from sleeping on his side with a purple ear bud jammed inside of it.   
  
“Fuck.”   
  
He groped around for his phone—which turned out to be lodged under his ass cheek—and checked the time. It was a little after six in the evening. Good. He could go back to sleep. Why the hell was he even awake to begin with?   
  
Another series of knocks on the door to his apartment answered that question. Grumbling to himself about how he was going to piss all over the shoes of the person who had dared to wake him up, he got up off the futon, grabbing his blanket and pulling it around his naked body. It took all of about five steps to get from his bed to the door where he pressed his brow to the cold metal to look out through the peephole.   
  
It was Aaron.   
  
“The hell do you want?” Daryl asked, opening the door. He gripped the blanket tighter, gazing bleary-eyed at the man standing in the hallway.   
  
“You look like shit,” Aaron said, smiling warmly.   
  
“You’re about to,” Daryl countered sleepily, rubbing his eyes with one hand. “Didn’t answer my first question.”   
  
“Tobin said you weren’t feeling well.”   
  
“Tobin was right.”   
  
“I brought soup,” Aaron said, holding up a plastic bag of take out. Daryl’s stomach rumbled in approval as the heavy scent of potato soup hit his nose.   
  
“Give me a sec. I’m naked,” Daryl said. He shut the door in Aaron’s face, but not before he caught one of the other man’s eyebrows arching up toward his hairline.   
  
Daryl didn’t have a chest of drawers. Instead, he kept his clothes in cardboard boxes on a plastic shelving unit he’d snagged for $10 at the thrift store. It wasn’t fancy, but it worked for the time being. He grabbed the first pair of “pajamas” he laid his hands on—a pair of torn sweat pants and an old Georgia Aquarium shirt that was more oil stains than fabric. He’d ripped the sleeves off years ago.   
  
“Alright,” he said, pulling the door to the apartment open again. Aaron stepped inside and set everything down on the counter that separated his small kitchen from tiny entryway. Daryl hadn’t noticed the six pack of beer in his hands before. He grabbed one and started ripping into the take out bag. There were three containers of soup, each containing a different kind.   
  
“Wasn’t sure what you liked,” Aaron said. Daryl picked up a couple of rolls and what looked like some kind of potato concoction.   
  
“Thanks,” he said before taking a seat on the futon and shoving half a roll into his mouth.   
  
“Sure,” Aaron said. “Brought some movies too. Thought we could get movie night out of the way.”   
  
“Contiuin my education on hot celebrities?” Daryl asked before loading his plastic spoon with soup and shoving it into his face.   
  
Hot, hot, hot, hot, _fuck_. He sucked in air, reverse-blowing on the scalding liquid sitting on his tongue.   
  
“What kind of friend would I be if I didn’t?”   
  
Daryl made a general gesture toward the grubby DVD player sitting on top of his TV.   
  
“What are we watchin?” Daryl asked before blowing on the top of his soup cup.   
  
“Oscar Isaac in the new Star Wars. Have you seen it?”  
  
“Nope.”   
  
“Good,” Aaron said. “Also, if you don’t ship Finn and Poe by the end of it, we might not be friends anymore.”   
  
“If I don’t what?”   
  
“Ship.”   
  
“Aaron, you can tell a dog to roll over until your throat’s sorer than a hooker’s knees during refund season, but if he doesn’t know what it means, he ain’t gonna do it.”   
  
“It means you want them to be a couple. Relation _ship_.”   
  
“Mhm,” Daryl said.   
  
Aaron picked up the remote and hit play.   
  
He was right. Oscar Isaac wasn’t bad to look at, and he could definitely see the Finn/Poe thing. For some reason though, he had a hard time imagining them having sex. Finn just seemed so… young. Mentally. Hand holding, cuddling, kissing… sure. But sex?   
  
He wondered if he seemed like that to other people. If they could tell he’d never… Shit, it wasn’t like he was a virgin, but at the same time, did it count that he’d fucked a couple women if he never really wanted to?   
  
The most experience he’d had with a man was Rick and… _Oh, God_. He knew he had called Rick before he fell asleep, but what he had actually said had slipped his mind. Or maybe not slipped so much as gotten pushed to the back behind potato soup and beer and light sabers. He’d told Rick he’d let him fuck him. Or had he? Was he already asleep by then? Shit.   
  
And if he was awake, had he really meant it? He didn’t know anything about what it would feel like to let a man inside of him. Which made it all the more silly that the thought alone had him licking his lips.   
  
“Aaron…?” Daryl said quietly, the sound of Kylo having a temper tantrum nearly drowning him out.   
  
“Mhm?”   
  
“You, uh...” Daryl chewed on his bottom lip. “You’ve been with men, right?”   
  
Aaron reached for the remote and paused the movie without hesitation.   
  
“Are you asking if I’ve had sex with men?”   
  
“Yeah.”   
  
“I have.”   
  
“How do you usually… when… This is weird shit to ask, isn’t it?” Daryl cleared his throat and starting tearing another roll apart with his fingers. He wasn’t hungry anymore, but he ate a bite anyway. It felt like a brick going down.  
  
“You haven’t?” Aaron asked  
  
“Haven’t what?”   
  
“Been with a man.”   
  
“No. Some chicks, but I didn’t...” Daryl shook his head.   
  
“You didn’t like it?”   
  
“Felt okay, but they just weren’t…Hard to explain.” It wasn’t like he didn’t cum most of the time. But something about the soft curves and tits just didn’t do it for him. Not like rough hands and rough voices and beards. Fucking beards.   
  
“No, I get it,” Aaron said. “It’s like having a peanut butter and jelly sandwich when you’re craving a perfectly cooked slab of steak. It works, but you aren’t really satisfied until you finally get your teeth around the thing you really wanted all along.”  
  
“Right,” Daryl said. The metaphor worked well for him too. He abhorred peanut butter with ever fiber of his soul. “Guess you been there too.”   
  
“I had too many sandwiches, honestly. My dad was under the impression that if I slept with enough women, I’d somehow be cured of gay through the magical power of vagina.”   
  
“Your dad sounds like an asshole.”   
  
Aaron laughed. “You’re not wrong. But I think part of it was that he grew up when being gay meant your life was going to be torture. I think he hoped he could save me from that somehow, because he couldn’t save himself.”   
  
“Your dad was gay?” Daryl asked. Aaron nodded.   
  
“Maybe bisexual or something else. We never had a chance to talk about it. I didn’t find out until after he died when mom told me the real reason they’d gotten divorced was because she caught him fucking the landscaper in the garage. On top of her car.”   
  
“Shit.”   
  
Aaron didn’t say anything for a minute. He tore a piece of roll off himself and stuffed it in his mouth, washing it down with a swig of beer.   
  
“What do you want to know?”   
  
Daryl sighed and took a sip of his own drink. Now it was officially awkward.   
  
“When, uh, when you’re cookin steak, are you usually the one, uh, operating the grill.”   
  
Aaron laughed softly.   
  
“I usually top, yes.”   
  
Daryl scrubbed a hand over his face. He should’ve had a few more beers before he started this line of conversation.   
  
“Have you ever…uh...”   
  
“Bottomed? Yes.”   
  
“What’s it like?”   
  
“It felt good,” Aaron said. “But for me, it was a lot like a peanut butter sandwich.”   
  
“But it felt good?” Daryl asked.   
  
“It did. I was lucky enough to have a guy who knew what he was doing and took his time. That’s very important,” Aaron said. “You have somebody you’re thinking about fooling around with?”   
  
“Kinda,” Daryl said, neglecting to mention that the guy was a phone sex operator who he’d likely never meet. And that fooling around probably meant… Shit, what did it mean? Would Rick have him use his fingers? Daryl glanced furtively around the apartment, taking stock of the phallic shaped objects around the room. And shit, for a man who claimed to love steak, he was sorely lacking in barbecuing equipment. Empty beer bottles and some things from his cobbled-together tool set were about it on things he could imagine sticking up his ass.   
  
“Is he a nice guy?” Aaron asked. “I’m not saying straight people don’t have just as many bad guys as we do if not more, but there are definitely some men around who prey on inexperienced people who are either still in the closet or barely out of it.”   
  
“I think he is,” Daryl said, though it was a moot point anyway. “Guess I’m just trying to figure out if it’s somethin I’d want.”   
  
“You could always start out topping and work your way around,” Aaron said.   
  
“Thing is,” Daryl said, trying to imagine it, “kinda think that might be my peanut butter sandwich.”   
  
He looked down at the bread in his hands, tearing off another piece.   
  
“Fair enough,” Aaron said. “Then I you take it slow and make him do the same. Maybe try some things on your own first so you know what you like and can handle.”   
  
“But it’s good? Even though you don’t like it?”   
  
“I still like being touched there during sex,” Aaron said. “I just...”  
  
“Don’t like being fucked in the ass,” Daryl said.   
  
“I wouldn’t put it so bluntly, but that works.”   
  
“Well, how would you put it then Mr. Civlized?” Daryl asked, more to give him a hard time than anything. “Twenty extra points if you somehow include sandwiches again.”   
  
“What are the points good for?” Aaron asked.   
  
“Never know if you don’t got any.”   
  
“Hmm,” he said, taking a long swallow of beer while he thought it out. He shook his head, and Daryl thought he could see a hint of a blush creeping on his cheeks. Daryl started taking a sip right around the time he opened his mouth. “I don’t mind a little meat in my buns, but I don’t want the whole sausage.”   
  
He had to spit the beer back into the bottle to keep from spitting it everywhere.   
  
“Son of a bitch,” he said, coughing.   
  
“I’ll take those points now,” Aaron said.   
  
“Guess I’ll figure out somethin they’re good for later. Probably a beer at Mick’s.” Daryl raised his bottle toward Aaron and polished it off.   
  
“Ready to finish the movie? Any more questions for your wise gay mentor?”   
  
Daryl threw the salt packet from his silverware at him. Aaron ducked like it was a brick, laughing when he did.   
  
“Shut the fuck up,” Daryl said, smiling.   
  
“Sure,” Aaron said. “But for the record, I hope you get that steak.”   
  
“You and me both,” Daryl said. “But for now I’ll settle for looking at one. Go on and please tell me Kylo dies by the end of this damn thing. I hope Rey stabs him in the dick.”   
  
“Guess we’ll find out,” Aaron said.   
  
“Guess we will.”   
  
Daryl settled back onto the couch, laying down and plopping his feet into Aaron’s lap.   
  
When he finally got back to bed after Aaron left, he dreamed about sugary voices and spaceships and Texas Roadhouse.


	9. IX

Daryl woke up far earlier than he had intended. His shift didn’t start until 11, which meant he'd meant to sleep until 10:20, but his phone told him it was only a little past seven  by the time he decided to give up on going back to bed.    
  
Digging the sleep out of the corners of his eyes with his fingers, he sat up, the futon squeaking with every movement. It was getting to the point where he’d have to crawl under there soon and tighten everything up with a screwdriver. It never lasted, but if he didn’t catch it before the screws got too loose, then he’d find himself waking up half on the floor after one of the bolts slipped out completely.   
  
That would kill about 10 minutes of the four hours he had to fill, he decided, pulling on his underwear and padding over to the toolbox he kept on the floor near the TV. He dug around and grabbed the screwdriver he needed before crawling back over to the bed and scooting underneath.   
  
He tightened the first bolt. The back two were always tricky because he couldn’t cock his arm up the way he would like to get the right leverage for the job. His apartment didn’t have enough space for him to pull the thing off the wall without some serious Tetris-style rearranging, and he couldn’t get it tightened properly if the futon wasn’t unfolded. He worked the bolt, contorting his arm up over his head in the small space and twisting the screw driver blindly. It felt thick in his hand. Thick and smooth and warm from the heat of his skin.   
  
He craned his neck to look up at it, thinking back to the conversation he’d had with Aaron the night before. And the thing he’d said to Rick on the phone. Or maybe said anyway.   
  
Bolts first. Get the job done.   
  
He did, inching out from under the futon and maneuvering back to his feet. He looked at the screwdriver in his hand. It was his favorite one. A lot of the others he had were grooved to make them easier to grip, which always hurt his hand if he had to put some real strength into a twist. This one was smooth all over with a thin coating of something rubber-like on the outside. It felt comfortable in his palm. He licked his lips before sighing and shaking his head.   
  
Jesus, he was thinking about screwing himself with a screwdriver.   
  
He picked up his phone and found the earphones that had fallen to the floor beside the bed. With a quick glance at his banking app and a few minutes spent plugging upcoming bills into his calculator, he decided to bite the bullet. He laid down and dialed the sex line, setting the screwdriver beside him on the mattress.   
  
The voice that answered the phone was decidedly different from the usual operator. A way deeper bass. He sounded like Barry White’s cousin.   
  
“You have a favorite stud you want me to connect you with or do you want to roll the dice today?”   
  
“Constantine,” Daryl said.   
  
There was a long pause.   
  
“Hello?” Daryl asked.   
  
“Constantine doesn’t come in until 8,” he said. “You want someone else?” 

“I’ll call back,” Daryl said, hanging up the phone. Shit, it had never occurred to him that Rick wasn’t at the phone sex line all the time. It made sense though. The man was human. He had to sleep and eat and relax like everybody else.   
  
Daryl checked the time again. It was only 7:24. He sighed. He knew from experience there was nothing on TV at that time of morning except news and infomercials. Taking a shower would be useless considering his intentions. He picked up his phone and tried screwing around on there for a minute, but his Facebook feed was nothing but recipes his aunts had posted and a post from one of his uncles about how he got fired from his job because of the “dam mexicans.” Daryl rolled his eyes. Yeah, probably definitely the Mexicans and not the 20 pounds of meth he smoked or snorted every week.   
  
Sighing again, he got up off the futon. He opened the fridge and pulled out leftovers Aaron had insisted he keep. Dipping a roll in a half empty bowl of cold tortilla soup, he took a bite. At least he was eating breakfast for a change. If cold soup and a stale roll could really be considered breakfast.   
  
By the time he was done, he still had fifteen minutes left to spare. As a last resort to kill time, he washed his dishes, his heart pounding harder and harder in his chest as the clock on the microwave inched closer to eight. He was really going through with this. Whatever Rick asked him to do to himself, he wanted to do it. In some fucked up way, he wanted the other man to be the first person he ever fooled around with, even if it didn’t actually count.   
  
He forced himself to wait until 8:01 to call.   
  
“Constantine,” he said to the usual operator.   
  
“Of course,” he said, before putting Daryl on hold. Daryl laid back down on the futon, bouncing one leg up and down nervously, the whole bed creaking while he did despite being tightened up.   
  
“Daryl?” Rick asked, cutting into an ad about exciting new products from Saints and Sinners Toy Company.   
  
“Mhm,” he said. “How’d you…?”   
  
“Boss popped into the break room to tell me you were on hold so I wouldn’t screw around making my coffee.”   
  
“You usually screw around makin your coffee?” Daryl asked, his pulse hammering in his throat.   
  
“It’s a delicate process,” Rick joked. “You need to talk, or can I do something for you this morning?”   
  
“I, uh...” God, was it normal for it to feel like every limb in his body was pulsing? “I want to do it,” he said quickly, cringing when he realized how fucking stupid that sounded. “With you, I mean.” No, not that either. Well, yes that, but he should _say_ that. “I mean, I want… fuck.”   
  
“Calm down, Sugar,” Rick said smoothly. “Close your eyes and take a deep breath.”   
  
Daryl did. His brain slowed down enough for his mouth to work. He kept his eyes closed when he spoke. For some reason, that made it easier.   
  
“P-stuff inside of me,” Daryl said. “I wanna try.”    
  
“Well, shit, Daryl,” Rick said. “And here I didn’t get you anything.”   
  
Daryl didn’t know what to say to that.  
  
“Don’t suppose you’re wearing the same outfit you were when you called yesterday?” Rick asked. “Might be my favorite thing you own.”   
  
It took Daryl a minute to think back through the fog that was the allergy pill and remember what outfit Rick was talking about. His cheeks warmed.   
  
“Boxer briefs,” he said. “Black ones.”   
  
“That’s not gonna work for me,” Rick said, voice oozing with so much sex that Daryl couldn’t believe it was eight in the morning. God, what he wouldn’t give to get morning sex from a man who could talk to him like that. “Take ‘em off.”   
  
“Whatever you want,” Daryl said, slipping his thumb under the band to work them down his legs. He dropped them on the floor next to the futon.   
  
“Whatever I say goes, huh?”   
  
“Mhm,” Daryl said.   
  
“Start with your nipples,” Rick said. “We both know how much you like that. You have your headphones in? Hands nice and free for everything I tell you?”   
  
“Yes.”   
  
“Sir,” Rick said.   
  
“What?”   
  
“Yes, sir. Or my name. That’s how you’re gonna answer me today,” Rick said. Daryl’s cock gave a little jerk. “Got it?”   
  
“Yes,” Daryl said, licking his lips, “ _sir_.”   
  
Rick mm’d quietly in his ears.   
  
“Good,” Rick said. “That’s good, Daryl.”   
  
Daryl shifted, settling more comfortably onto his bed. Closing his eyes he ran his hands up his sides before touching his nipples, rubbing them in soft circles with his fingers. He sighed quietly.   
  
“There you go,” Rick said. “A little harder than whatever you’re doing. Pinch, squeeze, twist.”   
  
Daryl did all three, groaning in the back of his throat, his chest arching up off the futon. His cock dribbled a thin line of precum down onto his stomach, connecting the two together with a thin string.   
  
“Keep going,” Rick said. “Do it until they’re good and sore.”   
  
“Yes, sir.” With his thumb and index fingers on both hands, Daryl gripped them tight, pulling and twisting them roughly.    
  
“Rick,” he moaned softly, the name feeling like it had always belonged in his mouth. Like his lips were created just to form the specific phonetic sounds required to say it.   
  
“Jesus,” Rick said. “I shouldn’t have worn my tight jeans today.”   
  
“Touch it,” Daryl said. “Want you to. Please. Through your jeans, whatever you can get away with.”   
  
“Yeah?” Rick asked. “Want me to cum right here at my desk? Make a mess of my underwear?”   
  
“Please,” Daryl begged. “Rick. Sir.”   
  
“Fuck.”   
  
“What kind?” Daryl asked, rubbing his fingers over nipples he was sure were going to be bruised by morning. “Underwear I mean. Shit, just what are you wearin period?”   
  
“Black tee shirt. Blue jeans that feel about two sizes too tight right about now. Black cowboy boots.”   
  
“And?”   
  
“Tighty whities,” Rick said. “Very tight at the moment.”  
  
“You gonna?” Daryl said. “Jerk off for me, I mean.”   
  
“At this rate, I might cum without needing to,” Rick said. “Where are you? Set the scene for me, Sugar.”   
  
“Bed. Naked, but you knew that. Rubbing my nipples like you told me to.”   
  
“I think I told you to abuse the hell out of ‘em actually,” Rick said. “I might be paraphrasing.”   
  
“Told me to make ‘em sore,” Daryl said. “They are.”   
  
“Then it’s time to move on,” Rick said. “How’s your cock?”   
  
“Harder than yours,” Daryl said, trying not to think about how true that probably was. He preferred to keep the mental image of Rick discreetly palming himself under his desk alive.   
  
“Be more specific or I’ll stay on your nipples until you get sick of talking to me,” Rick said.   
  
“Joke’d be on you,” Daryl said. “I could listen to you read a refrigerator manual.”   
  
“Is that right?” Rick asked. “You like the way my voice sounds?”   
  
“Mhm. Reminds me of warm apple pie.”   
  
“Just for that,” Rick said, “I’m gonna let you touch yourself. One hand, loose as you can stand it.”   
  
“Loose?”   
  
“Just a little relief so we can work on the main reason you called me today,” Rick said. “I want to get at least a finger in that tight virgin asshole of yours.”

The way Rick said the words was positively obscene. If his voice was warm apple pie, that sentence was streams of vanilla ice cream melting and dripping over the sides. Daryl had never wanted something a la mode more in his life.   
  
Daryl reached down and grabbed his cock, moaning in relief at the touch.   
  
“Loose,” Rick reminded. “And if you get even close to cumming, you stop immediately. Understood?”   
  
“Yeah,” Daryl said, forcing his fingers apart to loosen his grip. They tickled his cock on the upstroke, just enough to scramble his brain like an egg in a damn 90s anti-drug commercial.   
  
“Yeah?” Rick asked.   
  
“Fuck,” Daryl said. It took all the willpower he had not to tighten his fist and start jerking until he was covered in his own jizz.   
  
“Stop,” Rick said. And somehow, against every instinct he had, Daryl did. A quiet drawn-out whine slipped out of his mouth.   
  
“Rick, please.”   
  
“Jesus, you sound so hot begging,” Rick said. “You forgot your manners though. That’s why I made you stop.”   
  
“Please,” Daryl said again.   
  
“Shhh. How about we move onto something else. You think you’re ready?” Rick asked. Daryl’s already pounding heart sped up. Christ, he was going to have a fucking heart attack before he could even find out what he was truly into.   
  
“Yeah.”   
  
“I just got onto you for being impolite,” Rick said. “Since I can’t punish you personally like I want to, how about you play by the rules for me, Sugar?”   
  
“Yes, sir.”   
  
“Much better,” Rick said. “Two strokes for being so good for me.”   
  
Daryl savored them too, wrapping his fingers firmly around the base of his cock and dragging them up and back down, enjoying every pure second of friction he could get. He let out two long, breathy moans.   
  
“You’re killing me” Rick said.   
  
“What?” Daryl asked, giving the head of his cock one more squeeze before letting go.   
  
“There’s precum soaking through my jeans,” Rick said.   
  
“Yeah?” Daryl asked.   
  
“Damn wet spot,” Rick said.   
  
“So make a bigger one,” Daryl suggested.   
  
“Don’t think I’ll have much of a choice,” Rick said. “I’m gonna whether I do anything or not.”   
  
“Know you’re full of shit, but keep talkin,” Daryl said.   
  
“If I told you I wasn’t full of shit, would you think I was unprofessional?” Rick asked.   
  
“Think you were lyin.’ But no, I wouldn’t think the other thing.”   
  
“If I told you I wasn’t lying, would you believe me?”   
  
“Are you?” Daryl asked. “Lying?”   
  
“No,” Rick said. “I’m not.”   
  
Daryl made a soft whining noise in response. He had no way of being one hundred percent sure that Rick wasn’t just trying to rile him up, but he chose to trust him in the moment. It was much nicer to imagine the other man squirming in his desk chair with his arousal soaking through his pants than it was to imagine him sitting there scrolling through his Facebook or doodling stick figures on scrap paper until his next break rolled around.   
  
“But enough about how much I wish I could tug your legs around my waist and make you mine,” Rick said. “Let’s get back to you.”   
  
Jesus.   
  
“You’re gonna need something slick,” Rick said. “Do you have lube?”   
  
“Uh...” Shit. Daryl hadn’t grown up in a bunker or a cabin in the woods somewhere. He knew the basic logistics of how two men got it on. But it hadn’t actually _occurred_ to him that he was going to need more than just desire and the handle of a screwdriver to really try shit out. He should’ve been using that time before 8 a.m. to make a store run.   
  
“It’s okay,” Rick said. “What about cooking oil?”   
  
“Shit, I don't know.” Daryl got up off the futon, cringing at the squeaks. He hadn’t cooked anything in his apartment that couldn’t be microwaved since he had moved in. He opened up the cabinets, digging around a box of old spices an aunt had pulled out of her cupboard and insisted he take.   
  
A small bottle fell out onto the kitchen floor, popping open and spilling all over the tile and his toes. He leaned down and picked up the rest and slammed it down on the counter. What the fuck was tarragon anyway?   
  
Shoved way in the back behind an old coffee can he’d emptied and never bothered throwing in the trash, he found a bottle of some kind of cooking spray.   
  
“Hundred percent olive oil,” he said, reading the label. “It’s spray shit though.”   
  
“We can probably make that work,” Rick said. “Might want to put a towel down if you care about your sheets. Could get messy.”   
  
“I don’t,” Daryl said. “Don’t even care about the mattress beneath ‘em.”   
  
“Good,” Rick said. “Let’s make it filthy then. Lay back down.”   
  
Daryl did, setting the can of cooking spray down to the screwdriver beside him. It rolled against his body, cold against his skin.   
  
“Relax,” Rick said, and it wasn’t until then that Daryl realized he was breathing about three times faster and louder than normal. He forced his lungs to slow down.   
  
“There you go, Sugar. Nice, deep breaths,” Rick said. “Remember this is your show. If anything doesn’t feel right, you stop. I don’t want you to hurt yourself. Ever.”   
  
“What do I do?” Daryl asked.   
  
“We’re gonna take it slow,” Rick said. “Go on and lube up one of your fingers. Then I want you to rub your hole for me. Nothing inside yet. Just start getting good and acquainted with what it feels like to be touched there, okay?”   
  
Daryl said okay, but his heart felt like it was about to beat right out of his ribs. Still, he did as he was told.   
  
It felt ridiculous spraying fucking olive oil onto his finger, but he did it anyway, rolling a bit to the side so he could reach back and… He grunted as his side cramped up, twisting awkwardly until he managed to stretch it out enough to stop the pain.   
  
He decided to try it from the front instead, bending one leg at the knee so he could reach easier. He held his dick out of the way with his left hand, a feat made all the more difficult by how much he really wanted rub the fuck out of it. He refrained, focusing on massaging olive oil onto the pucker that was his ass.   
  
“How’s it feeling?” Rick asked.   
  
“Good,” Daryl said. “Not like sex good, but...”   
  
“But?”   
  
“I don’t know,” he said. “Like havin somebody play with your hair good?”   
  
“I see,” Rick said. “Keep going then.”   
  
“Yes, sir,” Daryl said, closing his eyes and focusing on the feeling of his finger rubbing his ass. He tried different touches, varying the pressure, circling the rim.   
  
“Don’t get too ambitious,” Rick said. “But when you’re comfortable, you can try pushing inside. Just a little at a time. Don’t try to go all the way in before you’re ready.”   
  
“Okay,” Daryl said, teasing his entrance a little. It felt strange, but not bad.   
  
“You’ll probably need more of that oil,” Rick said. “And remember to breathe.”   
  
Daryl sprayed more oil onto his fingers, rubbing the droplets that dripped onto his chest into his skin. He was gonna be more greased up than Paula Dean’s insides by the end of the damn phone call.   
  
He tried pushing a little deeper, grunting quietly when his body resisted. He pulled back out after making it to the first knuckle on his finger and massaged the outside of his hole some more.   
  
“Don’t hurt yourself,” Rick said.   
  
“Burns,” Daryl said, trying to ease more of his finger into his body. The inch or so of space between his first and second knuckle felt like a cross-country road trip.   
  
“A little or a lot?” Rick asked.   
  
“A little,” Daryl said. It wasn’t near enough to make him want to stop.   
  
“That’s normal,” Rick said. “But touch yourself.”   
  
“Tip of a finger in my ass isn’t touching myself?”   
  
Rick laughed softly.   
  
“Stroke your cock a few of times while you're pushing. It’ll help.”   
  
Daryl moved his left hand up and down his shaft, moaning softly. It worked too. Somewhere on the third or forth stroke, his body stopped resisting and he was able to finish sliding his middle digit all the way inside.  
  
Now what? He didn’t feel anything other than the finger occupying space inside of him. He wasn’t sure if he expected a full on fireworks show or slow-burning embers, but either way this couldn’t be _it_. It felt nice having something in there, just the fullness of it, but not get-off-on-it nice. Aaron had said it felt good. Really good.   
  
“Did it,” he said. 

“Did what?” Rick asked.   
  
“Finger,” Daryl said, blushing. “It, uh, it’s in there.”   
  
“All the way?”   
  
“Mhm.”   
  
“Shit,” Rick said, sounding impressed. “That’s good, Daryl. Real good. Now we’re to the tricky part. You ready?”   
  
“Gettin it in there wasn’t the tricky part?”   
  
“Nope,” Rick said. “Maybe hard, but not tricky.”   
  
“How’re your pants?”   
  
“Still wet,” Rick said. “Might be taking my morning break later than I’d like. No second cup of coffee for me either.”   
  
“Sucks to be you,” Daryl teased. “What’s the tricky part?”   
  
“Rubbing in the right place the right way,” Rick said.   
  
“How do I do that?”   
  
“Still good and turned on for me, Sugar?” Rick asked.   
  
“That important?”   
  
“Very.”   
  
Daryl looked at his cock, still very hard and very flushed.   
  
“A little,” he lied. “But wouldn’t say no to hearing you moan.”   
  
“I wouldn’t say no to having a reason to.”   
  
“Give yourself one then,” Daryl said. God, he’d pay for 5 hours worth of phone calls just to know Rick had touched himself even once. Not that he could know that for sure or ever would.  
  
“You’re a tempting little shit, Daryl.”  
  
“Could tell me what you’d do to me.”   
  
“I think we both know what I’d do to you,” Rick said.   
  
“Don’t mean I don’t like hearing it.”   
  
“You wanna hear it? Really hear it?”   
  
“Asked, didn’t I?”   
  
The next words out of Rick’s mouth were the most sexed-up ones he’d spoken in the entirety of the time that Daryl had been calling him, which was saying something. Each syllable was wrapped up in so much heat that Daryl was surprised his headphones didn’t fuse to his ears.   
  
“Sugar, I would fucking destroy you.”   
  
Daryl’s bit his lip and squirmed on the futon. If he hadn’t been lying about only being a little aroused, he would’ve easily gone from a 3 to a 10. Since he was lying, his body cranked up to a fucking 11. He felt his cock twitch in his hand and had to stroke it a few times just to calm the fuck down. Another drop of precum oozed from the tip. He let it fall onto his abdomen before rubbing it into his greasy skin.   
  
“Fuck me,” Daryl said, and he meant it.   
  
“You turned on _now_?” Rick asked. “Gonna fuck that tight little hole with your finger until you cum?”   
  
Jesus.   
  
“Yes, sir.”   
  
“Good boy,” Rick said. “Shouldn’t have any problem finding the where if you’re anywhere near as turned on as I am. Angle your finger toward your belly button. Feel for it.”   
  
“Feel for what?” Daryl asked, already following the instructions.   
  
“You’ll know.”   
  
He felt around. Rick was right. He knew. The little area that felt different, like a chestnut buried under his flesh.   
  
“Then?” he asked.   
  
“Rub it. Try side to side. Or circles. Or my cock.”   
  
“That last thing an option?” Daryl asked.   
  
“I fucking wish,” Rick said, continuing on without a pause. “Try different pressure too. It has to build up a bit, but you’ll have to figure out what feels good too.”   
  
Daryl started rubbing side to side in firm little motions.   
  
"Rubbin."   
  
“Fuck it,” Rick said.   
  
“Fuck what?”   
  
Rick’s answer was a quiet moan.   
  
“Are you…?” Daryl asked. “Really this time?”   
  
“Fuck,” Rick said quietly.   
  
“How?” Daryl said. “Please.”   
  
“You first.”   
  
“Trying the side to side shit. Playin with the pressure.”   
  
“Good,” Rick said. “And through my jeans. Palming and squeezing.”   
  
“Swear you’re not bullshittin me?” Daryl asked.   
  
“Try circles,” Rick said. “And I swear. Jesus.”   
  
Daryl tried circles, large ones that covered the whole area, and small ones that concentrated pressure right in the center. He tried gentle ones and medium ones and…  
  
“Oh fuck,” he sighed softly. It was just like that day Rick had him massage himself. But deeper and better and… Daryl moaned.   
  
“There you go,” Rick said, panting softly. “Whatever you’re doing, that’s it.”   
  
“Fuck.”   
  
“Daryl, it’s taking everything I have not to undo these damn jeans. Everything. You sound so fucking good right now, Sugar. Just don’t stop. Please."  
  
“Wasn’t planning on it,” Daryl said, pausing to let out a moan he couldn’t hold in. “Can I jerk off?”   
  
“If you need to, but...” he trailed off, like he was having trouble concentrating on forming a sentence. “But if you can hold off, you should. See what it’s like to cum just from that.”   
  
“You still?”   
  
“Couldn’t stop if I wanted to.”   
  
“Oh fuck,” Daryl whined. His mouth slacked open, and he raised up so he could get a better angle, so he could get in deeper and rub better. His abs burned from the effort, but he was far more concerned with getting the right leverage to rub that spot as fervently as humanly possible.   
  
“You’re breathing so heavy,” Rick said. “Wish I could hear.”   
  
“Hmm?” was all the conversation Daryl could muster.   
  
“What it sounds like down there. Your finger all slick in your ass.”   
  
“Dirty,” Daryl mumbled.   
  
“I am,” Rick said. “But that’s why you call me, isn’t it? Because you're dirty too.”   
  
“Fuck.”   
  
“Mhm. Just keep rubbing. Cum whenever you want. You’ve earned it.”   
  
“You close?” Daryl said.

“Extremely. Tell me how things are feeling for you.”   
  
“So fuckin good,” Daryl said, curling his toes and digging them into the sheets. He massaged faster, trying to remember to breathe while he concentrated on the pleasure building somewhere inside of him. A groan escaped his clipped breathing, strangled and deep.    
  
“Shit,” Rick said. “I’m cumming.”   
  
Rick’s moan sounded too real to be fake. It was gruff and manly but also quiet and muffled like he was genuinely trying to hide it. At that exact moment, Daryl fully believed that he had just jizzed in his blue jeans.  
  
That thought helped break dam, and Daryl came too, so hard that all he could do was let his jaw hang open for whatever sounds wanted to spill out of it, neighbors be damned. The ceiling above him blurred and his abs tightened up even more. Then it was over, his cock pumping long ropes of cum onto his stomach. He’d never felt a damn thing like it before in his life.   
  
A goddamn steak indeed. And Rick was a five star fucking chef.   
  
“Jesus Christ, fuck, Rick,” Daryl said, the words all running together in a wanton little string. He was still fucking cumming. “Shitjesus.”   
  
It took another line of swears and a couple more “Rick”s for it to finally stop. Trembling all over, Daryl flopped back onto the futon.  
  
Holy. Shit.  
  
“Fuck,” he said, wiping sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand.   
  
“Take it you enjoyed that?” Rick asked.  
  
“Jesus,” Daryl answered. His heart felt like a bass drum thumping against his ribs, the only solid thing about him at the moment. Everything else felt like warm taffy.   
  
“You wanna do it again?” Rick asked. “With more fingers? Or something bigger?”    
  
“Hell yes,” he said, glancing at the screwdriver still sitting next to him on the mattress. Maybe someday.   
  
“How about an assignment?”   
  
“You my professor now?”   
  
“Mhm,” Rick said. “You’ll have a Ph.D. in being my perfect little whore by the time we’re done.”

“And here I thought I hated school,” Daryl said. “What’s the assignment?”   
  
“You need some better lube,” Rick said.   
  
“No shit. My asshole feels like Martha Stewart’s wet dream right now.”   
  
“And you need some things to put that lube on,” Rick said. “Toys if you feel comfortable buying them. But other things will work. Carrots. Cucumbers. Zucchini.”   
  
“Want me to stick vegetables up my ass?” Daryl asked, but for some reason he got a tiny thrill of excitement at the thought. Something about it just felt _dirty_. Dirty like Rick jizzing in his pants at work. The good kind of dirty.   
  
“You opposed?”   
  
“Not exactly.”  
  
“Good,” Rick said. “Condoms too just to keep things sanitary.”   
  
“Got it.”   
  
“And Daryl, Sugar...”  
  
“Mhm?”   
  
“Don’t call me again until you’ve finished your homework,” Rick said, using the same sultry honey voice that always made Daryl feel like his veins were vibrating. “I hate it when people don’t come to class prepared.”   
  
Daryl let out a noise that was very nearly a whimper.   
  
“Guess I better go shopping soon.”   
  
“Guess you better,” Rick said. “Bye for now, Daryl.”   
  
“Bye, Rick. And thanks.”   
  
“Was my pleasure. Really, this time.”

The line went dead.   
  
Daryl got up and made a grocery list. 


	10. X

Rick had a problem—no, not just one problem, several problems. His heart was hammering away like a hummingbird on speed. He was sweating and the short hair around his face was starting to curl due to the damp.   
  
But the biggest problem was the wet spot on his jeans, somewhere between the size of a half dollar and a standard coaster.   
  
At the time, furiously rubbing his cock through his jeans had seemed like a good idea, but now that it was over and he could feel the slick wet heat with every single movement he made... Now that he had to pee and didn’t feel like he could even get up from his desk until the thing dried, well, it seemed pretty goddamn stupid.   
  
“Fucking hell, Daryl,” he mumbled to himself. He hit the button for his personal line and left it open, effectively taking himself out of service until he could figure out what the hell to do. He scrubbed a hand over his face and rubbed his beard.   
  
It’s just crisis management, Rick. You’ve been shot in the face for fuck’s sake. You can figure out what to do with a damn cum stain.   
  
He took a deep breath and thought through his options. The first was trying to sneak to the bathroom without anyone seeing. Just straight up James Bond that shit until he was safely behind closed doors. Then what? Wait it out?   
  
Strike that from the mental list.   
  
He looked over at his coffee, still three quarters of the way full and cold—he hadn’t thought to take one sip after Daryl told him he wanted to try playing with his asshole. Not that he regretted a damn thing (okay, maybe one damn thing). He could always microwave it if he ever figured out how to get out of his fucking desk chair.   
  
Or…  
  
Rick looked at the cup again and stuck his finger down into the coffee. Barely even lukewarm. He glanced around to make sure no eyes were on him and took his phone out of his pocket, setting it on top of the desk.   
  
With another quick glance around, Rick looked down at the dark liquid in the cup before carefully pouring the entirety of it directly into his lap. He half-dropped/half-threw the mug down onto the floor where the handle broke off in two pieces.   
  
“Son of a bitch,” he said, hopping up out of the chair. Coffee dripped down his legs and onto the plastic floor runner. Across the room, Abraham leaned around the door of his cubicle and looked his way.   
  
“You piss yourself, Grimes?” he called, winking at him.   
  
“You got any paper towels?”   
  
“Got one better,” Abraham said, appearing a few seconds later with a fluffy black towel. “Was gonna hit the gym after work. I’ll use one of theirs.”   
  
“Thanks,” Rick said, drying up some of the coffee on his legs before sopping it up off the floor. He picked up the broken mug and threw it in the trash.   
  
“Hell, that’s my line,” Abraham said, before jogging back across the office to grab the phone. Rick finished cleaning up in peace.   
  
“Need to run home and change,” he said, poking his head around the door to Martinez’ office. He gestured to his lap. “Coffee spill.”   
  
“Shit, man. Hope it wasn’t hot.”   
  
“Wasn’t cold,” Rick said. “Be back in fifteen or twenty.”   
  
“See ya.”   
  
Rick skipped the walk home in favor of a taxi. Crisis averted, his regrets rolled back down to zero.

* * *

 

  
Daryl had a problem. Three days had passed since Rick gave him his homework assignment. He’d spent all three at work, but now he finally had a day off, which meant he could finally do said assignment and call Rick back.   
  
That wasn’t his problem.   
  
His problem was a bank account balance that meant he could spend approximately $20 at the store and that any phone call he did make was going to have to be under twenty minutes (ten free, ten paid) if he wanted to make sure he wouldn’t be fucked on paying the phone bill. He had gone through the call times in his phone over and over, adding them up, and that had been his conclusion. If he could even talk to Rick that day. It was Saturday and he knew now that the man actually had some kind of schedule at work. He might not even fucking get him.   
  
But he had to _try_.

He had a whole list of times and dollar amounts tucked firmly into his wallet, but the $20/twenty split seemed the most agreeable. He would have to make due without beer that week. And it’d be sandwiches, top ramen, and ass vegetables for food. Maybe something from McDonald’s after he went through his change.  
  
In a way, he knew his priorities were fucked up. The more logical thing would be to give up calling. Or to tell Rick he could only do the free time so he’d be jerking it like a schoolboy afraid of getting caught until he got through his bills. But after the orgasm Rick had given him the other day, there wasn’t a fucking chance in hell he couldn’t dedicate the time to another one, and he didn’t think he could do it in ten minutes.   
  
He stood in front of stacks of fresh produce at the local grocery store, trying to decide what things looked appealing. Truth be told, the answer was everything. The eggplant looked especially so even though he knew in his head he didn’t stand a chance of getting it inside of himself (yet?). The thought of it though…   
  
He let his eyes wander back to the things that looked a little more conducive to assplay. The jalapenos looked like a good starter thing, but they also seemed like they’d be inviting trouble, condoms or not. He wasn’t sure they were firm enough either.   
  
Looking around furtively from the corners of his eyes, he grabbed a pack of carrots and threw it in his basket. Some of them weren’t much wider than his finger which made them a pretty safe bet fit-wise. After that, he picked up a couple of cucumbers too, skipping over the zucchini which would require more cooking than he felt like doing. At least he liked cucumber raw.   
  
Shit.   
  
A look inside his basket made him start blushing immediately, like anyone else who looked inside was just going to be able to tell his intentions.  
  
Quickly, he reached over to grab a couple of oranges to disguise the rest of his purchases, taking them from the bottom of the stack without so much as a second thought. He realized his fuckup too late, watching in slow motion as a whole row gave way and fell to the floor, rolling from one side of the produce aisle to the other.   
  
Fucking shit shit shit.   
  
He scrambled to pick them up before some asshole from the store came around, fearful they’d make him pay for the lot. In his haste, like a damn character in some stupid kid’s cartoon, Daryl stepped on an orange, slipped, and fell right onto his ass in the middle of the produce section.   
  
“Christ.” He could tell by the wetness against the back of his thigh that he’d landed on at least one orange. Grimacing and blushing so hard, his face felt like the coals of a campfire, he started to get up off the floor. A hand appeared in front of him.  
  
“Hey. You alright?”   
  
Daryl’s breath froze in his lungs, and it took a full ten seconds before his body reminded him that breathing was a thing that wasn’t optional. He sucked in a breath as smoothly as he could, fully unable to find it in himself to look up past the wrist of the hand being offered him. If he had been alright after eating it in the middle of the grocery store, he was certainly not alright now. He focused on the fingers, on the subtle blue of the veins visible through weathered skin. He forced another breath down into his chest.  
  
“Sir...” the man said again, the word seared into his consciousness after the last phone call confirming what Daryl already knew. “You okay?”   
  
Daryl nodded, unable to speak, knowing full well if he opened his mouth then the other man would know what he knew too. Instead he steeled his nerves, deciding that it didn’t matter what he saw. It had been too late for give-a-shits a long time ago, even if he had thought that this would never actually happen. He slowly looked up.   
  
Holy. Fucking. Shit.   
  
Daryl knew the man. Well, he didn’t. But he’d seen him before. The bow legs and the salt and pepper beard were unforgettable. Though now, the only word running through his brain was “blue!” The eyes looking down at him were an unforgettable shade, even in the harsh fluorescent lighting of the grocery store. He had never gotten close enough to see them or the subtle smile lines around his eyes. Or the pink scar above his eyebrow.   
  
It took too long for Daryl to realize his mouth was hanging slightly ajar. He shut it and took Rick’s hand, letting him pull him up off the floor.   
  
“Everything okay here?” a guy asked. Manager if the collared shirt and bald patch were any indication.   
  
“Yeah,” Rick said. “Sorry about this. I’ll pay for ‘em.”   
  
“Nah, I will,” Daryl said, finally finding the strength to speak and feeling a little self-satisfied at the way Rick’s whole body went rigid next to him. “Was my fault.”   
  
“Don’t worry about it,” the manager said. "It happens."  
  
Daryl nodded and stepped away from the accident, pretending to examine some limes. Rick stepped up next to him and picked up a cantaloupe, holding it in his hand like he was trying to get a feel for the weight.   
  
“Mighty big elephant in this room, wouldn't you say?” Rick asked, thumping on the outside of it before adding, " _Daryl_."   
  
Daryl cleared his throat.   
  
“Think there’s orange juice running down my leg,” Daryl said. " _Rick_."  
  
“I live nearby if you want to clean up.”   
  
Daryl picked up a zucchini, brushing his fingers over the grooves and ridges. Inexperienced as he may have been, he knew exactly what he was doing.  
  
It was Rick’s turn to clear his throat.   
  
“Was trying to get some homework done.” Daryl held up his shopping basket. “But guess I could put if off if you’ve got a washer and dryer.”   
  
“I do,” Rick said. “And I’ve been told I’m a pretty good tutor.”   
  
“How near is near?” Daryl asked. “Don’t want things to get, uh...”   
  
Rick stepped closer, occupying his space. Being able to feel his breath ghost over his skin was so erotic Daryl felt like his soul was going to straight up leave his body. “Sticky?” Rick offered, leaning around like he was looking at the orange stain, but making damn sure to check out Daryl’s ass in the process.   
  
It made him feel dirty in the best possible way. Rick was just as good at that in person as he was on the phone.  
  
“Mhm.”   
  
“C’mon then,” Rick said, starting to walk way. “Let’s go get those pants off.”   
  
Daryl set the basket of vegetables on the floor and didn’t look back. 

* * *

  
Shit shit shit shit.   
  
It was taking one hundred percent of Rick’s concentration to keep his cool. If sweating and glancing at Daryl’s reflection in the window of every building they passed counted as such.   
  
Even in his wildest jerk off fantasies, he’d never imagine watching Daryl wipe out onto a pile of oranges before inviting himself back to his apartment. Then again, that would’ve been pretty fucking out there even for a daydream.   
  
He glanced at the window of a bank as they strolled past. The man behind him had one hand up to his mouth, furiously chewing on his thumbnail. Rick had never expected him to be so damn pretty, and he wondered if he had ever seen him before and just failed to notice. And if he _had_ done that, how?   
  
“Just right around the corner,” Rick said, glancing back. Daryl nodded once. Rick did a mental inventory of his apartment.   
  
Would Daryl care about the trash can in the kitchen overflowing with Stouffer’s boxes? Or the dirty socks that had accumulated on the floor near the laundry closet since he’d last done it? Or the five dirty coffee spoons that had piled up on the kitchen counter since he’d thrown stuff into the dishwasher the previous Sunday?   
  
He didn’t look the type to care, all threadbare jeans and a sleeveless plaid shirt with strings hanging off his shoulders. But looks were bullshit. Daryl didn’t look like the type of guy who would stick his fingers in his ass either, but Rick knew he was.   
  
He swiped the card that unlocked the front doors to the apartment and pulled them open. Daryl followed him inside.   
  
Daryl made a little noise, and Rick couldn’t tell if it was a scoff or a laugh or something else entirely.   
  
“What?” he asked, hitting the up button on the elevators and turning to look at him.   
  
“Been neighbors this whole time and didn’t know it.”   
  
“Define neighbors,” Rick said.   
  
Daryl nodded his head toward the back of the lobby where a door led out to the parking garage and another led to a small closet for bicycle storage.   
  
“Live behind you I think,” Daryl said. “Ish.”   
  
“And here I thought I’d be the one coming in your backdoor,” Rick commented.   
  
“Stop,” Daryl said, his cheeks turning pink. “Which apartments are these?”   
  
“Georgia Pine Terrace.” Rick stepped into the elevator and hit the button for the sixth floor. Daryl followed him in, leaning against the opposite wall.   
  
“My friend lives here,” Daryl said, watching the elevator doors shut. His breath hitched slightly when they closed. Rick decided to stay put on his side of the car even though he very much wanted to cross the space and accost him against the wall.

He reminded him that if everything that had happened during their calls was the truth, and he believed it was, then Daryl had never so much as kissed a man. He didn’t want to push, not without knowing if Daryl was the fight or flight type.  
  
“That right?”   
  
“Aaron. Work with him,” Daryl said, talking to him around chewing on his other thumb.   
  
“What’s he look like?” Rick asked. “I don’t socialize much.”   
  
“About yay high,” Daryl said, holding his hand up in the air. “Blue eyes. Curly hair.”   
  
“Construction guy?” Rick asked, and Daryl nodded. Rick looked down at Daryl’s feet to find them covered in tan steel-toed boots. “You in construction too?”   
  
“Yeah.”   
  
“Work give you those wonderful arms, or are you just blessed?” Rick smiled warmly. Daryl averted his eyes, looking down at the floor of the elevator.   
  
“Crossbow at first,” Daryl said. “Then I guess work when I moved to the city.”   
  
The elevator doors slid open. Rick walked Daryl down the hall to his apartment and unlocked the door.   
  
Don’t jump his bones. Don’t jump his bones. Don’t jump his bones.   
  
“Laundry’s in here,” Rick said, hurriedly picking up socks and throwing them into the mesh hamper squeezed in next to the dryer. “You wanna borrow a pair of sweats or just hang around in your underwear?”   
  
Rick said a little prayer.   
  
“Underwear’s fine,” Daryl said. Rick promised God he’d start going to church again. Once. Maybe. “Got boxers on anyway.”   
  
“Sure.”   
  
“Can throw your shit in there too if you want,” Daryl said, undoing his jeans and sliding them off. Rick forced himself not to look and, Jesus, it was fucking difficult. “Ain't no need to waste your soap.”   
  
“Fair enough,” Rick said, picking up the mesh hamper and dumping the contents in on top of Daryl’s jeans. He took a deep breath and turned around. And he had really planned to be sly about checking the other man out. He had, he swore it.   
  
But the obvious tent in his faded camo boxers drew Rick’s eyes like damn cat to a laser pointer. Rick stared, the room quiet save the water filling the washing machine behind him with a muted swish.   
  
The tent in Daryl’s boxers twitched under observation, flipping the switch in Rick's brain from “I'd like to eat but I can wait” to “completely ravenous.” Rick stepped forward with purpose, firmly grabbing Daryl’s hips and rotating both of them so he could slam the other man’s body up against the dryer. It thunked loudly against the wall.

The kiss was messy. Messy like a good burger is messy, juices running down between your fingers. Messy like fudge pop in the middle of July. He devoured Daryl’s lips with fervor, writing every fantasy he’d had about men and about this man specifically onto the soft flesh.   
  
Squeezing his hips harder, Rick slipped his knee between the other man’s legs and eased his body until his thigh pressed right against Daryl's erection. He used his whole body to grind into the other man's hardened cock.   
  
“Jesus,” Daryl breathed, breaking the kiss and pressing his forehead against Rick’s so he could look down.   
  
“You can rub against me if you want. I do owe you an underwear full of cum,” Rick said.   
  
“How di...” Daryl trailed off at the next roll of Rick’s hips, his eyelids fluttering. “How’d you get out of that? Been wonderin.”   
  
Rick laughed quietly, tilting his head to suck on the skin right below Daryl’s jawline.   
  
“Poured a cup of coffee in my lap, pretended I spilled it, and said I needed to come home and change.”   
  
“Mm,” Daryl responded, leaning his head back. Rick took advantage, lathing at the salty skin of his neck. He licked his way down the column of Daryl’s throat before trailing along one of his collarbones.   
  
“How’s that feeling, Daryl?”   
  
“Porterhouse,” Daryl mumbled. And Rick had no fucking idea what that was supposed to mean, but he would take it anyway. Working his mouth on the other side of Daryl’s neck, he slid his hands up the back of Daryl’s shirt, feeling for the waistband of his pants. The other man froze before he could get his hand inside to grip one of his ass cheeks, stiffening in his arms.   
  
“I…Shit.” Daryl cleared his throat and pulled his arms back from where they’d been hanging loosely around Rick’s body. Rick took the clue and gave him some space, though he hadn’t expected Daryl to slip around him and out of the closet entirely.  
  
Reaching down to adjust himself in his jeans first, he turned around and joined Daryl on the couch.   
  
“Sorry,” Daryl said. “Just...sorry.”   
  
“It’s alright,” Rick said. “I ambushed you a little. You rather just talk? You don’t owe me shit, Sugar.”   
  
“No,” Daryl said. “I want it. You. Guess I'm just kinda...”  
  
“Freaking out?”   
  
“Heart’s runnin wilder than a rabid skunk on the Fourth of July.”  
  
Rick reached toward Daryl’s chest, pausing with his hand out.   
  
“Can I?”   
  
Daryl jerked his head once in a nod, and Rick pressed his fingertips against the skin of the other man’s neck, feeling for his pulse point. Daryl was right. His heart was fluttering faster than bumblebee wings.

“But you want to?” Rick asked.   
  
“Yeah.”   
  
“And what exactly is it that you want?” Rick gently rubbed Daryl’s skin in small circles with his thumb. “I don’t want there to be any confusion. I don’t want to try anything you don’t want me to try.”   
  
Daryl fidgeted. His heart somehow sped up. Rick couldn’t believe it even had a “faster” to go to.   
  
“Fingers,” Daryl said. “Or somethin else. Maybe even...Dunno if I’m ready, but...” He sighed. “Don’t even know where to start.”   
  
“How about we exchange numbers,” Rick said. “So you can call me for free. And so I can call you back. That a good place to start?”   
  
Daryl nodded and reached into his shirt pocket to pull out his phone.  
  
“404-555-8982,” Rick said, watching Daryl type it in. He pulled his own out and made a contact.   
  
“912-555-4294.”   
  
“Make yourself comfortable, Daryl,” Rick said, getting up off the couch. “I have an idea.”   
  


* * *

  
Daryl wasn’t sure what he expected. Rick seemed so experienced he just kind of figured he’d come back any second with something magical that would help calm his nerves. Or get him so riled up that he didn’t care about them at all. He had no idea what that magical thing would be--whiskey maybe? Porn?  
  
What he hadn’t expected was for his phone to start ringing, and for the name “Rick” to be sitting on his screen above the answer button.   
  
“Hello?”   
  
“Hey, Daryl,” Rick said. “You do what I asked you to do?”   
  
Daryl took a deep breath.   
  
“The vegetables or the gettin’ comfortable thing?”   
  
“The second one,” Rick said. “Though I have to say I appreciate the effort you put into your studies earlier.”   
  
“Your couch is better than mine,” Daryl said, laying himself across the cushions. “Think there’s a ketchup stain on it though.”   
  
“Yeah,” Rick said. “Wish I could blame my kid for that, but that was all me.”   
  
“Wish I could blame a kid for steppin on an orange and bustin my ass in front of the hottest guy I’ve ever seen, but we don’t always get what we want, Rick.”   
  
“Yet, there you are. On my couch in your underwear.”   
  
“Touche.”   
  
“Wanna take that shirt off?” Rick asked. And Daryl wondered just how deep his apartment went. He couldn’t hear him at all through the walls.   
  
“Yeah,” Daryl said, working on the buttons one-handed. He missed his purple headphones. They’d spoiled him already. “Yours too,” he said, dropping the shirt onto the floor of Rick’s living room.   
  
“Maybe,” Rick said. “If you ask me nicely.”   
  
“Please,” Daryl said.   
  
“Please what?” Rick asked, and Daryl grumbled.   
  
“Please, Rick, take off your damn shirt.”   
  
“Little too sassy to qualify as polite,” Rick said. “But alright.”   
  
Daryl heard rustling on the other end of the line. It was so much better than their other phone calls, getting to know that when Rick said he doing something, he really was. And if he had any reason at all to doubt on the walk over that Rick wanted him, being slammed up against his dryer while Rick dry humped his hard cock quelled that.   
  
How the hell could a man like that want a guy like him?   
  
“Your nipples still sore from the other day?” Rick asked.

“Do what I’m told, don’t I?”   
  
“Yes you do,” Rick said. “Can’t believe you’ve never found anyone to take advantage of what a good fucking slut you are.”   
  
“Ain’t,” Daryl said. “Only for you.”   
  
“Hell, Sugar.”   
  
“You want me to touch ‘em?” Daryl asked.   
  
“I do,” Rick said. “Nice and rough. Feel free to make a little noise. I know I’d like to hear it.”   
  
“Mutual.”   
  
“Go on,” Rick said. “Just like you do for me all the time.”   
  
Daryl tucked his phone against his shoulder and brushed over his nipples with his fingertips. They were definitely still tender, and he whimpered softly in surprise at just how much. Pulling his bottom lip between his teeth, he pinched them tight and twisted hard.   
  
He grunted and groaned in the back of his throat. It hurt so fucking good.  
  
“Beautiful,” Rick said. “Do that again, but don’t hold back this time.”   
  
“What?”   
  
“I want to hear you. Open your mouth. Let whatever sound you make come out.”   
  
"How your neighbors gonna feel about that?"   
  
"They're out of town," Rick said. "It's been a good week for gay porn and jerking off more than I should. Now, be good and let me hear you."    
  
Daryl opened his mouth, forcing his lips to stay parted despite his instincts. He grabbed his nipples again and rolled them hard between his fingers.   
  
“Aah, fuuck.”   
  
“That’s good, Daryl,” Rick said. “You’re being real good for me. And I’m gonna make it worth your while.”   
  
“What’re you doin back there?” he asked.   
  
“Forcing myself not to touch things I really want to touch,” Rick said.   
  
“Do it a couple of times,” Daryl said. “I wanna hear you too.”   
  
“You givin me orders?” Rick asked.   
  
“Nuh uh,” Daryl said. “Just wanna hear. Please.”   
  
“There you go,” Rick said. “Here’s something you can listen to.”   
  
Daryl waited. Along with a lot of rustling and a few loud scratching noises, he heard the distinct sound of a zipper being dragged slowly along its track. He glanced down at his own cock, longing to touch it. But he didn't have permission. Not yet.   
  
The silence on the other end of the line after he heard the zipper was agonizing. Like being being stuck at the top of an incline before the rollercoaster drops. Always a few seconds when you’re watching the ride from the ground. A few hours when you’re up there looking down. Waiting, waiting, waiting.  
  
The rollercoaster fell with a sigh-like groan that found the shortest track between Daryl’s eardrum and his dick. His cock throbbed with need, and he squirmed on the couch, one leg bicycling up and down the cushions.   
  
Rick moaned again, louder this time, and Daryl heard probably the hottest sound he’d ever hear. Rick moaning on the phone harmonizing with Rick’s actual moan coming from somewhere else in the apartment. There was a slight delay between the real voice and the one coming through the earpiece. Like someone had decided to turn porn into a round.   
  
“Jesus fucking Christ,” Daryl said. “Can I? Please?”   
  
“Jerk off with me, Sugar.” Rick moaned again. Daryl grabbed his cock and moaned back.   
  
“Don’t you dare cum though,” Rick said. “I’m just getting started.”   
  
“You should come out and finish.” Daryl pumped his hand from base to tip, relaxing into how good it felt. Something in his head told him he was ready for whatever Rick could throw at him.   
  
“Should I?”   
  
“If you want,” Daryl said. “I think I do.”   
  
“Then I’ll talk to you in a second,” Rick said, the line going dead. Daryl reached over and slid the phone onto the coffee table right around the time Rick walked out of the other room, shirtless and looking every bit like arousal personified. Daryl supposed he was.   
  


* * *

  
Rick had never seen anything more breathtaking than Daryl on his couch, one hand buried deep in his boxers, the other up over his head, highlighting the bulges of his biceps in a way that agitated the bulge in Rick’s pants.   
  
He remembered their last phone call, the promise he’d made that if they ever did fuck he would destroy him.   
  
He realized now that destroy wasn’t a strong enough word. He was going to obliterate him. Rip him apart with every ounce of ecstasy he could milk out of both of them. He couldn’t wait for the day he could watch his cum dripping out of Daryl’s ass onto the couch.   
  
But for now whatever the other man’s body could handle was what Rick was willing to give.   
  
“Stop,” Rick said. “Hand out of your shorts.”   
  
Daryl stopped immediately, his heated gaze not even breaking contact with Rick’s own. Rick took the long way around the coffee table, studying his prey, his eyes feasting on every bare inch of skin, on the small dragon on his arm, the little star on his hand that looked like something he might’ve done drunk in high school. Blue eyes, medium-length hair that wisped out at the ends and stuck sweaty to his forehead. And those shoulders that could’ve spanned the damn Grand Canyon if anyone needed an emergency bridge.   
  
“Come here,” Rick said. And Daryl stood up without hesitation, nerves smothered in his obvious arousal. When Rick kissed him this time, Daryl nearly took him to the floor. The other man gave himself to the kiss fully, leaning into him. Rick stumbled back before planting his feet and snaking his arms around his broad upper body.   
  
Holding him felt like it used to getting home after a long day of dealing with meth heads and public urinaters who tried to piss on his boots. It felt like sinking into his favorite chair in the break room back at the Sheriff’s Office. It felt like a cold beer on a Georgia summer night.

Kissing him was something else though. Kissing him felt like hunger. All-consuming. All-powerful. The need to taste him again and again. Like no amount of swiping his tongue against Daryl’s equally enthusiastic one would ever be enough to sate him. And maybe it never would be. And maybe that didn’t matter.   
  
“I’m asking this one,” Rick said. He had to hold Daryl by the cheeks to keep him from diving back into the kiss. “Not telling. Asking.”   
  
“Okay,” Daryl said.   
  
“Get on your knees for me?”   
  
Daryl slid down onto them like he’d fucking practiced. If it had been an Olympic event, even the Russian judge would’ve given him a 10.   
  
Rick’s jeans were still unbuttoned from before. Daryl grabbed them and tore them down his legs. A damn kid on Christmas morning who could just tell by the shape of the box that what he’d asked Santa for all year was waiting inside.   
  
“Never done this before,” Daryl said.   
  
“As long as you keep your teeth out of way, it’s kind of hard to screw up,” Rick said. “You ever had one?”   
  
“No,” he said. “Always wanted to get it over with as quick as possible. Figured making them suck me off would only take longer.”   
  
“Women, you mean?”   
  
“Yeah.”   
  
“Just take a guess on what would feel good,” Rick said. “Just seeing you down there is gonna be enough for me.”   
  
Daryl leaned forward and took the head of Rick’s cock into his mouth. Rick’s whole body jolted with the effort of keeping his hips from stuttering forward. He didn’t want to gag him. Not yet anyway.   
  
“There you go, Sugar,” Rick said. “That’s fucking perfect. Look at me though.”   
  
Daryl did, his eyes half-hidden behind hair that had fallen across forehead. Rick smoothed it back, tangling his fingers in brown locks. With gentle pushes, he guided Daryl’s mouth farther onto his cock.   
  
It took Daryl a couple of timid bobs, gently guided by Rick’s motions. And then he started to get the hang of it.   
  
It was the most perfect head Rick had ever gotten. The right amount of pressure from the other man’s lips. Warm, wet heat surrounding him. A tongue darting curiously over his flesh.   
  
“That’s so fucking good, Daryl,” Rick said, groaning quietly. Daryl moaned around him. Rick’s body twitched as the vibrations traveled along his sensitive skin.   
  
“Stop,” Rick said. “On your feet.”   
  
Daryl pulled off, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. Rick helped him up, stroking his hair softly before kissing him again.   
  
“This way,” he said, holding out his hand. Daryl took it, letting Rick lead him into the master bedroom.   
  
“You sure?” Rick asked.   
  
Daryl nodded, enough fire in his eyes for Rick to believe him fully.   
  
“I’ll take these then,” he said, slipping his fingers under the elastic band of Daryl’s boxers. He pushed them down over Daryl’s hips, letting gravity take care of the rest. Daryl stepped out of them.   
  
“Hands and knees this time,” Rick said, jerking his head toward the bed. Daryl stepped up to it, and Rick watched him take a deep breath before crawling across the sheets. Even from where he stood, he could see the other man was trembling, his arms wobbly trying to hold him up.   
  
“No,” Rick said. “Changed my mind. Roll over onto your back instead.”   
  
Daryl obeyed, laying back onto Rick’s pillows. Rick pulled the rest of his clothes off and crawled onto the bed between Daryl’s knees.   
  
“Never had a blow job before, huh?” he asked, looking at Daryl’s cock. “Not even a taste?”   
  
“Nuh uh.”

“Close your eyes,” Rick said. Daryl did. Rick leaned down and kissed Daryl’s right hip bone. He could feel him practically vibrating beneath him. “I promise I’m going to make you feel good. As good as I can.”   
  
“Just nervous,” Daryl said.   
  
“I know,” Rick said, moving his lips to the opposite bone. He kissed there too. “And it’s gorgeous, Daryl. You’ve got no idea.”   
  
“You are too,” Daryl said. “If gorgeous and hot as fuck mean the same thing.”   
  
“I reckon they do,” Rick said, leaning in to dart his tongue across the tip of Daryl’s erection. The other man sighed. “Feels good already, huh?”   
  
“Yeah,” Daryl said. Rick locked eyes on his closed lids and swallowed him whole.   
  
They flew open right around the time Daryl moaned “fuck,” locking on Rick’s. Rick took him as deep as he could before bobbing back up the length.   
  
“Holy shit.”   
  
“Mhm,” Rick said, making sure his lips were tight around the shaft when he did. Daryl’s hips arched up, forcing him deeper into his mouth.   
  
“Shit. Sorry.”   
  
Rick locked an arm over Daryl’s lower abdomen, holding him down the way he was used to holding a woman when he let his mouth wander south. He sucked, using every trick that had ever been used to make him go completely insane. Bobbing, twirling, swirling, licking.

It worked.  
  
“Rick, fuck,” Daryl said. A strangled whine poured out from between his beautiful lips. “Christing... shit.”   
  
Rick had to re-secure his arm as Daryl bucked up off the mattress.   
  
“Can’t. You gotta…”   
  
Rick stopped immediately, licking a stripe along the underside of Daryl’s cock as he pulled away. He took two seconds to take in the sight of Daryl panting on his bed, completely undone, and then he dove back in, grabbing Daryl by the hips and pulling his thighs up onto his shoulders.   
  
“What are-oh, shit.”   
  
Rick swirled his tongue around the rim of Daryl’s ass, memorizing every single groove that made up the pink pucker of his entrance. He pushed in between the other man’s cheeks as far as he physically could, his nose pressing against his perineum while he lathed at the hole with his tongue.   
  
“Christ,” Daryl said, his fingers finding their way into Rick’s hair. He tugged gently at his waves, breathing heavily. Rick plunged the tip of his tongue inside until he met resistance. He pulled back out, licked some more and repeated.   
  
“Please,” Daryl said. “Drivin me fuckin nuts up here.”   
  
“Please what?” Rick asked, barely ghosting his tongue over Daryl’s balls.   
  
“Please fuck me. Do whatever the hell you want to me, but please,” Daryl said.   
  
“What’s the matter, Sugar?” Rick asked. “Need somethin in your hole?”   
  
“Yeah, you,” Daryl said. “Said please. Three times.”   
  
“You did,” Rick said. “Make it four. For the sass.”   
  
Daryl narrowed his eyes at him, but he said it anyway.   
  
“Drawer on the night stand. Open it.”   
  
Daryl reached to the right and pulled open the drawer, revealing the mess of contents inside. Among the clutter of cell phone chargers, spare batteries and random papers was nestled a little purple bottle. Rick pointed it out to Daryl, and he pulled it out of the drawer, holding it up toward him. Rick took it.   
  
“Hand me a pillow.”   
  
Daryl did that too, pulling one from the other side.   
  
“Hips up,” Rick said, and Daryl raised them up off the bed. Rick slipped a pillow underneath, glad that he’d opted for navy blue over the white. He was going to be making a lot of questionable stains from now on.   
  
“You listening?” Rick asked.   
  
“Listening,” Daryl said.   
  
“Good,” Rick said. “You remember playing red light, green light as a kid?”   
  
“Yeah. In P.E.”   
  
“We’re gonna play it right now,” Rick said. “You need me to stop something at any moment, what would you say?”   
  
“Red?”   
  
“Good,” Rick said, reaching down and cupping Daryl’s balls. He rolled them in his palm until the other man groaned. “That’s real good, Sugar. And if something is a little too much and you need me to slow down? Or maybe do it a little softer?”   
  
“Yellow?”   
  
“Mhm,” Rick said, rolling Daryl’s balls in his hand again, smiling when Daryl’s eyes flitted shut momentarily. “And if I happen to ask you if you want to do something?”   
  
“Green?”   
  
Rick clicked his tongue and took his hand off of Daryl’s balls, moving a finger side to side.   
  
“Ain’t green?”   
  
“It’s only green if you want it to be,” Rick said. “I said if I ask you to do something. Never said it’d be something you’d want to do.”   
  
“Trick question,” Daryl said. “And bullshit. You could ask me to shove a damn cactus up my nose and I’d probably want to if you liked it.”   
  
“Don’t,” Rick said. “We’re being serious right now. I need to know you won’t let me hurt you. I don’t mean your nipples or maybe a bite here and there or even a slap across the face or the ass if you’re into it. But if I do fuck you, I need to know you can speak up and tell me when to stop if I need to stop.”

“I can,” Daryl said. “Tell you, I mean. Promise.”   
  
“Good,” Rick said. “One more time then. Green means?”   
  
“Do it.”   
  
“Yellow means...”   
  
“Don’t stop, but if you keep goin like that I’m either gonna break or cum before you want me to.”   
  
“Red?”   
  
“Stop before I punch you in the balls.”   
  
“Aced it, Daryl. You want me to fingerfuck your asshole now?”   
  
“Green,” Daryl said. “Like a damn St. Paddy’s day parade.”   
  
“That’s good, Daryl,” Rick said, popping open the bottle of lube. He coated the tip of one finger and reached down, swirling the lube around Daryl’s hole. And then he squirted it again, closing the lid and using his other hand to coat his entire digit. “You’ve been so damn good for me.” Rick reached with his other hand and nudged the insides of Daryl’s thighs. “Spread your legs a little more.”   
  
Daryl did, opening them wider. Rick slipped a finger between then and started to massage, pressing against Daryl’s entrance firmly without trying to snake inside just yet.   
  
“Put one of your arms behind your head,” Rick said.   
  
“Like this?” Daryl asked, tucking one forearm behind his head. His bicep bulged and one side of his body went completely taut, highlighting the shape of his rib cage and almost perfect 45 degree angle his chest took as it turned into his waist.   
  
“Perfect,” Rick said, nudging the tip of his finger inside. Daryl squirmed a little, but didn’t make a sound. If anything, he seemed to be trying to help, like his asshole was a pair of tight jeans and all it would take was a little wiggling to get Rick into it.   
  
Rick pulled his finger back out and slowly fucked the tip of it into Daryl’s body, easing it deeper as he went along.   
  
“Worked before,” Daryl said. “On the phone when you had me jerk off. Got it in there real quick.”   
  
“You in some kind of hurry?” Rick asked, but he grabbed Daryl’s cock anyway, moving his hand smoothly up and down the shaft while he worked the end of his finger in and out.   
  
Daryl moaned softly. Rick kept stroking until he got his finger the rest of the way in.

Logically, Rick knew Daryl’s internal body temperature couldn’t be much different than the women he’d been with. But he felt different, hotter and tighter around his finger than anyone else had ever been. His cock ached to be inside of the man laid out before him. Knowing Daryl was a virgin (at least when it came to being fucked) and that rushing anal probably wasn't best idea were the only things that kept Rick from flipping Daryl over and fucking him raw.   
  
Rick curled his finger up, feeling around for Daryl’s sweet spot, gently pushing into the soft folds of flesh inside of him until he felt it. He started rubbing.   
  
Daryl sighed and shut his eyes, letting his head roll to the side until his cheek nudged his bicep. Pleased with the reaction, Rick kept going, studying Daryl’s face and listening to his breathing. Every twitch or furrow of Daryl’s brow. Every breath and every rough exhale. He continued the massage accordingly, taking clues from the way Daryl reacted to the slightly variation.   
  
Rick wasn't sure how much time had passed when he watched Daryl's tongue dart out from between his lips. He licked them and let out a soft moan. It was simultaneously both the prettiest and hottest thing Rick had ever seen in his life. The former cop repeated the motion that had brought it on again and again, the same direction and pressure. Daryl rolled his head to the opposite side, pulling his arm out from under his head and digging his finger into the bedsheets.   
  
“Arm back under your head,” Rick said.   
  
“What?” Daryl asked, clearly in some other world. He moaned again, louder this time, his hips starting to rock in time with Rick’s movements.   
  
“Put your arm back under your head,” Rick repeated, more firmly this time. It made for much too pretty of a picture for him to let it go.  
  
“Mhm.” Daryl reached back up and tucked his arm back under his head.  
  
“You didn’t say ‘yes, sir,’” Rick said. And he nailed his finger down, pressing as hard as he could while rubbing in a rough circle.   
  
Daryl cried out, the sound somewhere between a moan and a shout. Precum beaded from the slit of his cock and oozed down the head.   
  
“Fuck! Yellow,” Daryl said. “Yellow, Christ!”   
  
Rick pulled back.   
  
“Just making sure you remember your manners, Sugar.”   
  
“Kinda hard to concentrate on my manners with you touchin me like that.”   
  
“Like this?” Rick asked, adding a little more pressure. Daryl groaned and squirmed.   
  
“Or maybe like this?” Rick asked, changing the direction of his massage, moving his finger counterclockwise.   
  
“Fuck,” Daryl whimpered.   
  
“How about another finger?” Rick asked. “See how much your asshole likes being filled?”   
  
Daryl opened his eyes back up slightly, giving Rick a hooded gaze. He seemed to be thinking about it.

“Lime...?” he said.   
  
“Lime?” Rick asked.   
  
“Ain’t that green and yellow mixed?”   
  
Rick smiled. “Fine with it but want me to take it slow?”   
  
“Yeah. Guess yellow woulda worked by itself, huh?”   
  
“No, that’s good, Sugar,” Rick said, pulling his fingers out entirely so he could add more lube. He smeared it liberally onto his index and middle fingers. “Lime works fine.”   
  
He grabbed Daryl’s cock before he even attempted to slip anything inside. Stroking loosely, it surprised him when both fingers went in with little resistance. Something about feeling Daryl’s muscles flutter around the intrusion made his already overheated body catch fire.   
  
He stroked his own cock softly to stay sane, fingerfucking Daryl’s hole at the same exact pace as his strokes. It made it so much easier to imagine the tight heat of Daryl's body surrounding and squeezing him.   
  
“Jesus, that’s hot as hell,” Daryl said, leaning up to watch.   
  
“Just taking the edge off,” Rick said. “Then I’ll be right back to this.” He crooked his fingers up and rubbed hard. Daryl moaned his name, falling back onto his arm and the pillow. Rick kept going, rubbing harder than before, dropping his other hand from his cock so he could concentrate properly.   
  
“Shit, shit,” Daryl said, sucking in a breath and holding it for a brief second before groaning roughly in the back of his throat. He sucked in another and did the same thing. A moan followed it this time. Rick didn't let up for a second, vigorously kneading his prostate with two fingers.   
  
There was nothing more beautiful in the whole of creation than watching Daryl slowly fall apart.   
  
“I can’t,” Daryl said, squirming. His hand curled over the side of his head, fingers tangling in his own hair.   
  
“You better ask,” Rick said. “Like the good fucking whore you are.” He rubbed harder, practically vibrating his fingers side-to-side.   
  
“Can I...ah fuck.”   
  
“Can you what, Sugar?” Rick asked. “Can’t read your mind.”   
  
“Can I..Christ..cum?”   
  
“Manners,” Rick said, pressing the thumb of his opposite hand against Daryl’s perineum, massaging inside and out.   
  
“FuckhellChristshitshit,” Daryl whimpered through is teeth, the words slurring together. He bit his lip hard and groaned. “Please, Rick. Please can I cum?”   
  
“Perfect,” Rick said. “So damn perfect. Go on then.” He pressed harder from both sides.   
  
Like he was waiting for the cue, Daryl moaned long and loud, his body arching up off the bed. From his elevated position, Rick had the perfect vantage point to watch the other man cum all over his stomach, his cock twitching out ropes of orgasm over and over. It felt like an eternity before it finally ended. Before Daryl started begging him to stop while his cock twitched uselessly.   
  
Rick eased off, fucking Daryl’s lubed up hole slowly before pulling his fingers out entirely and swiping the slick all over his thighs.   
  
Even panting heavily and shaking all over, Daryl managed to breathe out, “your turn.”   
  
Rick pulled the pillow out from under the other man's hips and helped him lay flat before swiping a finger through the mess of orgasm on his body and bringing to his lips to taste.   
  
Daryl's cum tasted dark and bitter like tobacco. It wasn’t a good taste, not yet, but Rick had a feeling like beer and strong coffee, he’d acquire it. He wanted to.   
  
After wiping Daryl clean with toe top sheet, Rick crawled up his body, sitting down on his broad chest. He didn’t have to say what he wanted. Daryl craned his neck forward and took him into his mouth, sucking like he was in some sort of blowjob competition and was going to get the blue ribbon if it killed him.   
  
“Can I cum on your face, Sugar?” Rick asked, staring down at the man who was currently hollowing out his cheeks around him.   
  
“Mhm.”   
  
“Won’t be long.” Rick felt a lot like a jack-in-the-box on its last note. One little nudge on the crank and…  
  
“Fuck. Close your eyes.” He managed to pull out right as the first wave hit, smearing a line of cum across Daryl’s lips before he could pull back and unload the rest onto his cheeks. One rope caught in his eyelashes. Another crossed the bridge of his nose.   
  
When he was done, Daryl licked his lips, tasting him too. Rick swiped a thumb across his partner's eyelashes so he could open his eyes.   
  
It was a gorgeous sight. Daryl pinned beneath him, starting at him with sapphire blue eyes, his hair sweat-laden and his face covered in Rick’s release.   
  
Dismounting his torso, Rick rolled over and went limp beside him on the mattress.  
  
“Can I wipe it off, Rick?” Daryl asked, turning his head to look at him. Rick took one last look, memorizing every single detail for later and then he nodded. Daryl wiped his face clean with a pillow.   
  
The two of them stayed like that for a while, quietly basking in the glow of whatever the hell had just happened. Rick wasn’t sure if it was only minutes or several hours before Daryl spoke.   
  
“Should probably put my pants in the dryer.”   
  
“Probably should,” Rick said. “You hungry?” He suddenly felt ravenous. Then again, he’d gone to the grocery store because he needed to grab something for lunch. He’d admittedly gotten a little sidetracked.   
  
“Starvin.”  
  
“C’mon then,” Rick said, reaching over to smooth Daryl’s hair back out of his face. “Let’s pop those in the dryer and order Chinese.”   
  
Daryl got up and pulled on his underwear and a shirt. Digging through the basket of clean clothes he'd never bothered to put up, Rick pulled on a pair of sweats, if only to be presentable for the delivery guy.   
  
Before he left the room, he looked back at the bed, surveying the damage. Cum smeared all over his sheets and pillowcase. One corner of the fitted sheet loose and showing the mattress underneath. Smiling softly at the disarray, he listened to Daryl throwing clothes into his dryer.   
  
He didn’t need to ask him it would happen again. If they would end up in bed together at every opportunity, slowly graduating from fingers to more fingers to Rick being buried so deep it felt like they shared one body. No, he didn’t need to ask any of that. He already knew the answer.   
  
Rick shut the door and joined Daryl in the living room. 


	11. XI

Daryl couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a good day. Before the city maybe. The last good day he could recall was when Merle was still alive. Some junkie who couldn’t pay up had given him Falcons tickets. Daryl had never cared about sports beyond archery, and Merle wasn’t even a huge fan himself. But the seats had been great, the beer had been cold, and Merle wasn’t on any of his own merchandise at the time.   
  
Daryl didn’t miss much about Merle. He didn’t miss the constant borrowing of his shit without asking or the tongue capable of spitting homophobic, racist bullshit at least once an hour. But he missed his brother’s laugh. And despite his many, many flaws, he missed having a brother period. Or any family at all, for that matter.   
  
The Falcons had won that game. He and Merle had cheered and hugged despite the fact that they rarely ever touched. It had been a good day.   
  
The day he’d spent with Rick so far had been better than good. A rare point of happiness in the monotony that had followed after he’d been released from jail.   
  
“That your kid?” Daryl asked, nodding at the two pictures on the living room wall. In one, a little boy dressed as a police officer held a plastic pumpkin in one hand and a plastic gun in the other, a broad smile showing two missing teeth. The other photo was more recent and was definitely a yearbook number—collared shirt, bowtie. He looked about fourteen in it, and like most fourteen year old boys, he had opted to keep his mouth a straight line.   
  
“Mhm,” Rick said. “Carl.”   
  
“He live with his mom?” Daryl asked, glancing at the other door leading out of the living room. He’d figured it was a storage closet, but maybe it was a second bedroom.   
  
“Yeah,” Rick said. “He was here last weekend.”   
  
“You got the every other weekend and holiday bullshit?”   
  
“That is the bullshit I’ve got.” Rick frowned and dug through his rice with a plastic fork.   
  
“Sorry,” Daryl said. “Wasn’t tryin to pry.”   
  
“It’s alright,” Rick said. “I don’t really talk about shit with anybody. Probably isn’t healthy. What about you? I mean, assuming everything you told me on the phone is true, I’m gonna assume no, but...”   
  
“Nah,” Daryl said. “Had a niece who fell into my lap for a couple of months once, but that was a long time ago.”   
  
“Keep in touch with her?”   
  
“Did until…” Daryl sighed. Despite the fact that the charges had been dropped, his family had mostly cut him off. The ones who liked his father or brother felt like he could have done something even if he hadn't been the one to kill either of them. The ones who didn't like them only cared that he had been to jail, guilty or not.  
  
“My turn to apologize for prying,” Rick said. “You want the last wonton, Sugar?”   
  
“Split it with you?”   
  
Rick broke it in half and passed him a piece. Daryl shoved it into his mouth and sucked his fingers clean.   
  
“You always eat like that?” Rick asked, and embarrassment crept up inside of Daryl's chest almost instantly. Normally a question like that would’ve pissed him off, made him bow up and start asking things like 'eat like what, asshole?' Or ‘what the hell’s that sposed to mean?’ But this was Rick, and he’d never wanted anyone to like him so much in his life.   
  
“Like what?” Daryl asked.   
  
“Sucking everything off of your fingers,” Rick said. “I’m trying to be good over here and let you finish eating before I start trying to get you back into my bed. You aren't making it easy on me.”   
  
Daryl’s cheeks warmed, which was a pretty solid testament to his circulatory system considering that his blood was starting to pool much further south than his face.   
  
“That’s weird,” Daryl said, when he’d managed to get a thought through his head that was more than a dreamed up image of Rick pounding into him.   
  
“That watching you suck on your fingers gets me hard?”   
  
“Nah,” Daryl said, setting a half-empty container of honey chicken down on Rick’s coffee table. “Just real full all of a sudden.”   
  
He slid his eyes over to Rick just in time to watch him smirk.   
  
“You’re right, Daryl, that is weird,” Rick said, putting down his rice. “Seeing as I am too.”   
  
Daryl watched, breath erratic, while Rick put his hand on his bare ankle and started sliding it up. The other man didn’t stop until he’d slipped it up the leg of his boxers to wrap it around his half-hard cock.   
  
“Fuck,” Daryl sighed. Rick’s hand was warmer than usual after holding the hot takeout container. It felt so damn good rubbing up and down his length, so good he whined when the other man let go.   
  
Next to him, Rick sat up, slipping out of his sweatpants. The outline of his erection through his underwear made Daryl want to dry hump the sofa.   
  
“Come here,” Rick said, patting his lap. Daryl couldn’t obey fast enough, scrambling to straddle the other man. In his haste, he kicked the coffee table, swearing through his teeth as pain blossomed in his toes.

But none of that mattered as soon as he felt the hardness of Rick’s cock settle against the crack of his ass. He rolled his hips, letting it grind between the cheeks.   
  
It was beautiful to watch the way Rick lost his train of thought, the way whatever thought was clearly in his mind got covered over by the feeling of Daryl rutting against him. His hand found Daryl’s cock again, only he didn’t move it this time. He just left it there, wrapped around the shaft.   
  
It took Daryl all of two seconds to realize that every slide of his body over Rick’s hard-on meant that his own cock would slide through the other man’s fist. He moved faster, rocking his hips like a boat in stormy waters.   
  
“Jesus,” Rick said, his head thumping gently on the drywall as he let it fall back. “Don’t stop.”

Daryl didn’t want to stop. But he did want something else. He leaned forward and nuzzled his face into Rick’s beard, feeling each bristle of it slide roughly across his cheeks and nose.   
  
Thinking it was a cue, Rick titled his head forward to kiss him sloppily, smearing saliva all around his lips. Daryl took some of the weight off his knees, letting gravity pull his body tighter against the other man's erection.   
  
“Oh, fuck,” Rick said. And Daryl couldn’t be sure if it was on purpose or on accident when Rick’s fingers loosened around his cock. He reached down and wrapped his hand around the other man's through the fabric of his boxers. Rick’s eyes flew open, locking on his like he was about to get onto him. Daryl waited for the “hands off” or “did I say you could do that, Daryl?”   
  
But it never came. Instead Rick kept staring at him, letting Daryl squeeze his fist as tight as he could make it go.   
  
“Gonna cum,” Daryl said, realizing he should’ve ditched his boxers before he sat down in Rick’s lap. But it was too late. There was no way he could stop when he got that close to the edge. He watched Rick’s chest rise and fall in jerks as air stuttered in and out of his lungs.   
  
“Can I?” Daryl asked. He’d been expecting a response. Even in his fantasies, he was used to holding off until Rick gave him permission to cum.  
  
Rick nodded, snaking his free hand around to the back of Daryl’s neck and pulling his mouth against his. It wasn’t even much of a kiss this time, just two mouths pressed together. Occasionally one of them would remember to move their lips or swipe a tongue across the other’s, but mostly they did nothing save drooling down each other’s chins as they got closer and closer and…  
  
Daryl came first, moaning low into Rick’s open mouth while his release spurted into his boxers. He eased his hand off the other man’s when he finished, but Rick didn’t let go, not until every last possible drop had been milked from his erection. Not until Daryl was begging him. Not until he came too.   
  
Daryl felt Rick’s groan vibrate all the way down in his chest. Fingers tangled into his hair, squeezing and pulling hard. Through defiled boxers, Daryl felt the twitches of Rick’s release followed by the feeling of wetness slowly creeping through the layers between them. The slick settled against his skin.   
  
“Well, hell,” Rick said, when he’d finally finished and pulled away. Daryl crawled off of him; his knees felt like wet cardboard.   
  
“Sorry,” Rick said.   
  
“What for?”   
  
“Really meant to try and fuck you just then,” he said, reaching over and smoothing Daryl’s damp hair back with his fingertips. He leaned over and kissed him, neat and clean this time. It felt like a thank you.  
  
“It’s alright,” Daryl said, licking the taste of Rick off his lips. “You can try later. Not like I can leave.”   
  
“Can’t you?”   
  
“Nope,” Daryl said, grabbing the front of his boxers with his fingertips and pulling them out. “Gonna need another load.”   
  
“Oh, I don't doubt that,” Rick said. “You wanna borrow something, or should we even bother putting clothes on you?”   
  
Daryl looked over at him, nodding his head at the wet spot in Rick’s own underwear.   
  
“Won’t bother if you don’t,” Daryl said.  
  
Rick stood up and pushed his briefs to the floor without hesitation.   
  
“Deal.”  
  



	12. XII

Daryl was no stranger to the intricacies of time. He had experienced on several occasions that weird feeling that everything seemed to be moving both too fast and too slow. His mother smiling and waving to him before she whipped out of their driveway, right into the path of an eighteen wheeler barreling down the blacktop at twice the legal limit. The blows from his father’s fists that had started after her death permanently broke something inside of him. The last day he ever saw his dad and brother alive. 

He knew it well. How the human brain and time sometimes failed to coexist as they were meant to. He just never realized the phenomenon could happen during a good moment too.  
  
_Th-thump, th-thump, th-thump._

Daryl felt like the cliché soundtrack of some horror movie or hospital drama. He knew it was all in his head...or maybe it was just the blood pulsing in his ears. But either way he swore he could hear his own heartbeat, racing alone like the hooves of a hundred wild horses.

Rick traced the back of his right shoulder with his tongue, following it as it curved into his neck, then up, up, up to lick behind his ear. The dots on the digital clock next to the other man’s bed flashed too fast, too slow. Rick nibbled on his cartilage and sucked on the lobe, his stomach flush with Daryl’s back.  
  
“Jesus, look at you,” Rick said. Daryl opened his eyes. The way Rick had him kneeling on the bed, he was on full display in the large sliding mirrors that were the other man's closet doors. He watched Rick’s hands slide up and down his torso in opposite directions before moving his eyes to the other man’s in the glass. Rick had stopped his oral assault to rest his chin on Daryl’s shoulder. Before the gears of desire could even properly turn in Daryl’s brain, Rick nuzzled his beard hair into the crook of his neck. Both of them watched Daryl’s cock twitch in the reflection.  
  
“I think you might have a bit of a fetish, Sugar.”  
  
Daryl hummed quietly, floating on just enough alcohol that he didn’t have the sense to snark back at his lover about how _he_ obviously had several. Rick had broken out a twelve pack of beer after he threw their underwear into the wash. He’d made Daryl promise he wouldn’t get drunk, just buzzed enough to take the edge off. The operator had made it abundantly clear he wanted Daryl sober enough to be able to say yes and no. And that if he got too drunk, anything resembling sex would be off the table.

Daryl had stopped at two. _  
  
_ “Tell me where you want to be touched,” Rick muttered in his ear, lips brushing against the soft curve of the shell. “This is about you now, Daryl.”  
  
“’Bout both of us,” Daryl said, transfixed on the mirror. He didn’t care much for how he looked in it, especially with his little pudge of a beer gut, but something about watching Rick touch him and kiss him like this made his blood feel all at once like ice crystals and hot lead. Another weird mix to go along with his fucked up sense of time.

Christ, this was happening.

“Rick, have you ever…? Know you got a kid and shit, but have you with…?”  
  
“No,” Rick said softly. “Just you.”  
  
“Just me?”  
  
“Just you. You gonna answer my question now, Daryl?” he asked. “Or should I guess?”

“Mouth,” Daryl said, expecting Rick to kiss him. But the other man didn’t. Instead he moved his hand up to run his index finger softly across Daryl’s bottom lip. He swiped it back and forth once, twice, three times before dipping it into Daryl’s mouth.  
  
Daryl started sucking on it as soon as it hit his tongue. Humming in satisfaction, Rick pushed the digit deeper and deeper in until Daryl's whole body jerked with a gag. His first reaction was to tug away from Rick’s hand, a remark already forming on his lips about being a little more careful. But Rick mm’d low in his ear, his chest rumbling against his back while his cock twitched hungrily against Daryl’s left butt cheek.  
  
“That okay?” he asked, his finger tracing Daryl’s own saliva around his lips. Daryl realized he would probably let Rick gag him until he puked if it made him that hot. And there was something kind of filthy about it, filthy in that way he never realized he liked until he started talking to Rick.  
  
“Try again.”  
  
This time, Rick made it two fingers, jamming them into the back of Daryl’s throat. The construction worker gagged again, drool pooling under his tongue. The weight of Rick’s fingers on the muscle forced it out where it ran over his lips and dribbled down his chin. He watched the whole thing unfold in the mirror, including the part where Rick’s lips parted at the sight, his own tongue darting out over them in obvious arousal.

Rick rutted subtly against him, but not subtly enough. Daryl felt the cool swipe of the other man’s precum over his flesh. Then, Rick gagged him again, and this time Daryl moaned around his fingers and rutted back against his cock, even as water welled up on his bottom eyelids as a reaction to the digits pushing their way down his throat.  
  
“You are the hottest thing I’ve ever seen,” Rick said, taking his fingers out of Daryl’s mouth. He used his hand to smear drool all over Daryl’s chin and down his chest. Daryl laughed, two short little notes.  
  
“Something funny?” Rick asked.  
  
“You callin me the hottest thing you’ve ever seen,” Daryl said. “Was thinkin the same thing about you.”  
  
“Mm,” was Rick’s only response. Then he was back to running his hands up and down Daryl’s torso, back to kissing and licking. He slid his tongue up the nape of his neck before pressing his lips against his ear again. The same question, his voice lower and more sultry than Daryl had ever heard it.  
  
“Where do you want me to touch you?”  
  
Daryl’s whole body started to tingle.  
  
“This some kind of a game you’re makin up?”  
  
“Mhm,” Rick said. “Play with me, Sugar.”

Jesus. Christ.

“Cock.”  
  
“Nope,” Rick said.  
  
“Ass.”  
  
“Nope.”  
  
“Balls?”  
  
“Daryl.” Rick’s tone was stern. A warning. It made Daryl want to fall forward and dry hump the mattress. He refrained.  
  
Instead, he looked at himself in the mirror, at Rick’s hands memorizing every inch of his torso while he waited for an answer that he was willing to follow.  
  
“Hips,” Daryl said, figuring that’d stump him. What sexy things could he do to his hips? Daryl felt the dip in the mattress before Rick knee-walked back on the bed, putting a little distance between his body and Daryl’s.

“Lean back,” he said, putting one arm across Daryl’s chest and pulling him back against him so that his body arched out like a bowstring. He was still upright enough to watch everything, though a faint ache told him that if it took too long his neck would start hurting. He didn’t care though. If the choice was between a neck ache and being able to watch everything Rick did to him, he would gladly take the former.   
  
Rick moved his hands down, putting them on the outsides of Daryl’s hips and squeezing firmly. He left them there, kneading into the flesh until Daryl was sure it would bruise. There was something comforting about it though, knowing that he would be wearing the marks, that there would be proof that this surreal day had happened. That he had met Rick and let him claim him like this. There was something too about watching Rick’s fingers sink as far as they could into the flesh of his hips, even if it wasn’t far at all.  
  
Finally Rick stopped, and Daryl expected another question. But Rick danced his fingers over both of his hip bones, forced to jut out of his skin by the angle of his body. The operator did that enough times to drive Daryl wild thinking about all the other things those nimble fingers could do, and then he turned his hands into claws and raked his nails slowly over the protrusions.

Daryl moaned, partially at the way it felt and partially in surprise. In the mirror he watched little pink lines appear on his skin. They would fade, probably before he and Rick were even done screwing around, so he made it a point to memorize exactly how they looked, following Rick’s fingers like little pink comet tails.  
  
“Where do you want me to touch you?” Rick asked.  
  
“Everywhere,” Daryl said, his chest heaving. Rick moved them so they were back upright. Daryl’s ass received another gentle dry hump.

“Gonna have to give me a specific,” Rick said, nuzzling his beard against Daryl’s skin some more. The construction worker squirmed, needy and desperate.  
  
“Head,” Daryl said, because why the fuck not?  
  
Rick nodded and brought a hand up, smoothing the hair back off of Daryl’s forehead. Fingers stroked through his locks, gently at first. Then fingertips turned into fingernails. Rick scratched softly at his scalp, running his digits both in trails and in expanding and contracting spider claws.  
  
Daryl was already ready to ascend to another dimension when Rick grabbed a handful with his left hand and pulled Daryl’s head back. Daryl’s eyes were torn from the mirror to the plain white ceiling. He couldn’t turn his head, but he let his eyes move to the right to find Rick staring at him.  
  
“Yellow,” he said without a thought. Rick’s fingers loosened, and no, that wasn’t what Daryl had wanted at all. He squirmed in need. “Nuh uh.”  
  
“'Nuh uh,' what?” Rick asked. “Need me to let go?”  
  
“Harder,” Daryl said. “But if you don’t give me a damn kiss already, I might die before you ever get anywhere near my ass.”  
  
Rick tightened his grip and used Daryl’s hair like marionette strings, forcing his head to turn until he found some sort of alignment that let him lean over and press his lips against his. Daryl moaned, desperate and louder than he would’ve liked. Rick mm’d softly in response, his tongue sliding across Daryl’s with fervor.  
  
The grip on his hair seemed to have a direct line to his mouth, and Daryl found it hard to do much besides let his lip hang open while Rick did whatever he liked to it. He weakly darted his tongue back against the other man’s, remembering every now and then that moving his lips was something he was supposed to do during a kiss.   
  
“Please,” he gasped, when Rick finally pulled away.  
  
“Please, what?” Rick asked, swiping his tongue back inside of Daryl’s mouth for another lick.  
  
“Can’t wait anymore,” Daryl said. “I can’t.”  
  
“I think you can.” Rick said his next words against Daryl’s lips. Daryl tried to lean up and kiss him again, but Rick held him back by the hair, laughing quietly in a way that made Daryl feel even needier somehow. “C’mon now, Sugar. Where do you want me to touch you?”  
  
“Rick,” Daryl said. No, not said. Whined. Daryl had fucking _whined_ his name. He did it again before he could even stop himself, his hips rocking into the air. “Rick, please.” He would’ve rutted against a fucking cactus for a goddamn second of friction.

“I should punish you for insubordination,” Rick said.  
  
“Punish me after you fuck me,” Daryl said.  
  
Rick sighed and looked over at him, head still tilted back. He smiled.

“You’re hard to say no to, Daryl. Especially when I want you as much as I do.”  
  
“Then don’t,” Daryl said. “Can have me, Rick. All you want.”  
  
“I can,” Rick said. “First cock to ever be inside that tight hole of yours too.”  
  
“Mhm. Can be right now.”  
  
Rick let go of his hair.  
  
“On your back on the edge of the bed.”  
  
Daryl flopped over like a damn catfish trying to escape a flat bottomed boat. He scooted to the edge, letting his knees hang over. Rick got up and snatched the bottle of lube from the night stand. 

“Little more,” he said, grabbing Daryl by the calves and pulling him across the sheets until his ass was halfway off the bed. He had to jam one leg against the wall next to the closet to keep from falling off.  
  
He waited for Rick to kneel down, to taste his hole or start fingering lube into it. But the other man did neither. Instead, he reached around the mattress scooting every pillow he had on his bed toward Daryl.  
  
“Uh…?”  
  
“Prop yourself up,” Rick said. “I want you to watch.”  
  
Daryl leaned up, realizing how close he was to the mirrored closet door. Everything was in view, from the strained muscles of his left leg keeping him on the bed, to the bruised knee of his other leg (when did he get that?) to his erection and balls and the crease of his ass. He wasn’t sure he liked being able to see his junk that up close and personal.  
  
But he did as Rick asked anyway, stacking pillows under his back and head until he could see things in the mirror with only a vague twinge of strain on his eyes.  
  
“Can you see?” Rick asked.  
  
“Mhm.”  
  
“Even here?” he asked, using his thumb and index finger to pry his ass apart, making the pucker of his hole visible in the mirrored door. His breathing got a little shallower.  
  
“Mhm.”  
  
“Good,” Rick dropped to the floor by his right leg. “You using your arms for anything important?”  
  
“No.”  
  
“Hold it open,” Rick said.  
  
It took Daryl’s brain a moment to catch up. And then another moment to process it, because goddamn.  
  
He reached down, tucking his fingers over the inner curve of his ass and prying it apart to expose his puckered hole to whatever Rick wanted to do to it. He couldn't help but remember being booked into the jail and having to do something similar so they could make sure he didn't have meth or a rocket launcher shoved up his asshole.  
  
He greatly preferred this.

Then again, exposing himself to Rick, as self-conscious as he was, still felt comfortable in a way he wasn’t accustomed to. There was something about Rick that put him at ease even if he couldn’t put his finger on why yet.  
  
“God, Daryl, that’s so good,” Rick said. “Thank you for being so good.”  
  
“Thought I was insubordinate.”  
  
“Mmm,” Rick said, pressing a lubed up finger against his entrance.  “It’s good when you’re bad too, Sugar. Means I get to play with you more.”  
  
Rick slid the finger in without preamble, keeping his body off to the side so Daryl could watch it slowly disappear inside of him. He hadn’t expected it to go so easy, not after all it had taken earlier in the day.

“Like butter,” Rick said. “Gorgeous little hole of yours is still a little fucked open from earlier.”  
  
“Will it stay that way?” Daryl asked.  
  
“If you let me live inside of you, maybe,” Rick said.  
  
“You wanna sign a lease now or...?”  
  
Rick laughed and kissed the top of his right thigh.  
  
“Let’s make sure my credit score checks out first,” Rick said. “Don’t want me writing checks my dick can’t cash.”  
  
“I’ve seen your dick,” Daryl said, staring at the place where Rick’s hand met his body. “Pretty sure you ain’t gonna overdraft.”  
  
“Shh,” Rick scolded gently. “Second one probably won’t be so simple.”  
  
“You had two in there earlier.”  
  
“Few hours between earlier and now.”  
  
“It happen that damn fast?”  
  
“Guess we’ll find out,” Rick said. Daryl watched him squeeze a line of lube down his second finger, spreading it with his thumb until it was slick all over. He pressed both digits against Daryl’s entrance, nudging at the pucker with thrusting motions so tiny that Daryl only knew they were happening by touch.  
  
“Focus,” Rick said. “Breathe. Relax.”

Daryl inhaled, trying his best to control how ragged the air sounded going in and out of his lungs. In the mirror, he focused his attention from what Rick was doing to his own chest, watching it rise and fall more steadily as he concentrated.  
  
Between his thighs, Rick managed to get past the first set of knuckles on his fingers. The burn of the stretch was even more welcome the second time, probably because Daryl knew just how worth it it was going to be.  
  
He released some of the tension in his extended leg, letting gravity pull his body farther onto Rick’s fingers, fully surprised when Rick landed a smack on the top of his other thigh. Fully even more surprised when he moaned softly at the sting left by the other man’s hand.  
  
“Don’t get greedy,” Rick said.  
  
“Don’t be so damn stingy then,” Daryl said. “Want ‘em. All of 'em.”  
  
“Want what? These?” Rick asked, sliding his fingers the rest of the way in. Daryl flexed his muscles around them. And maybe Rick was right. Maybe he was greedy, because he wanted more. For someone who had never had anything inside of him, he was very nearly craving the stretch of Rick’s cock. How the hell he could crave what he'd never had was beyond him.  
  
“You didn’t answer me,” Rick said. “Maybe that’s a no. Or maybe you just want ‘em like this.” He crooked his fingers, finding that spot inside of Daryl that made him sigh happily. “So what is it, Sugar?”  
  
“More,” Daryl said. “Want more.”  
  
“More rubbing? More fingers?”  
  
“Can’t I have both?”  
  
“Mhm.” Rick pulled his fingers back out, spreading them apart on the way. Daryl grunted, watching Rick twist his hand in the mirror, digits scissored out in a stilted V. He dove them back in and started to fuck Daryl’s hole with them in earnest, spreading them wider and wider apart as he went along. Transfixed, Daryl watched it all--the in and out, the slight gaping of his ass, the way Rick occasionally reached down to palm himself with his free hand.  
  
“Three?”  
  
Daryl nodded enthusiastically. More lube and Rick hardly bothered going slow this time, taking just enough time that he wouldn’t hurt him. Three fingers pumped in and out of him, fucking him wider. Occasionally, Rick would stop and pay attention to massaging Daryl’s sweet spot, slowly building him up until Daryl could only lay there on bed and beg.  
  
“Rick...” Daryl bucked onto his fingers. Rick didn’t bother scolding him. “Can’t anymore. Please.”  
  
“Tell me what you want, Sugar. With words.”  
  
“You.”  
  
“Nuh uh,” Rick said, digging his fingers up into Daryl’s prostate and kneading it. Daryl groaned about four swear words in a row. “Be specific. Nice and filthy like I like it.”  
  
“Want you to fuck me,” Daryl said. “Want you to make good on that promise you made.”  
  
“Keep going,” Rick said. He brought his free hand up, wrapping the thumb and forefinger around the base of Daryl’s cock and squeezing tight. “You can be dirtier than that. For me.”  
  
Daryl felt himself blush, but nothing could compare to the pure need he felt. His entire body was screaming so loud with desire that he was surprised no one could hear it. Talking had never been much of a strong suit for him, especially not dirty talk. But damn’t if that was what it was going to take to get Rick’s cock inside of him…  
  
“If you don’t start wreckin my damn asshole in the next five minutes, I’m gonna punch you in the nose.”  
  
Rick smiled and pulled his fingers out, leaving Daryl feeling stretched out and empty. He squirmed and whined quietly in his throat.  
  
“Get up.”  
  
Daryl practically fell with how fast he got off the bed. If Rick hadn’t grabbed him around the waist to hold him steady, he probably would have.  
  
“Easy,” Rick said, stroking a hand up and down his side before letting go. He settled down on the bed, taking the spot Daryl had just vacated.

Daryl stared, eyes drinking in the sight of Rick naked and splayed out for him. Keen eyes moved down the man’s torso, following the faint lines of his would-be abs and the V that lead the way toward his erection. Rick wrapped his hand around his cock and stroked lubricant up and down the shaft before settling his hand near the curls at the base, holding it steady.  
  
“Come here,” he said. And that’s when time froze in Daryl’s chest.  
  
_Th-thump, th-thump,_ then nothing.  
  
This was it. He’d wanted it and begged for it and he'd known this entire day was leading up to it, but it hadn’t seemed real. He was about to have sex. For the first time as far as he was concerned. And with Rick whom he’d never thought he would even meet half a day and a lifetime ago.

Daryl swallowed audibly and forced his legs to move. Trembling, he began to straddle Rick’s thighs, his cock very nearly brushing the one waiting for him.  
  
“Nuh uh,” Rick said. “Other way.”  
  
Daryl furrowed his brow. For a split second, even as he obeyed, he wondered if Rick didn’t want to look at him while they did this. And then he turned around, saw himself in the mirror and realized exactly what was going on. Rick wanted him to watch. He wanted Daryl to be able to see the cock sliding inch by inch into his ass.  
  
“You dirty fucker,” he muttered quietly. He heard Rick laugh softly behind him even while he started positioning himself.

It wasn’t easy finding a way to sit on Rick's cock like a cowboy who'd mounted his horse the wrong damn way. Daryl tried to kick his legs back onto the side of the mattress and stumbled. Then he tried scooting back, but he couldn't get his body up high enough to slide down onto Rick's willing erection. He sighed in frustration, his cheeks growing warmer by the second. He felt like a virgin idiot.    
  
“Might be easier to start up here,” Rick said, patting his tummy. Without hesitation, Daryl crawled onto the bed and straddled the other man’s torso before walking forward on his knees. It was awkward and the complete opposite of smooth, but it worked. The head of Rick’s cock nudged up against his ass.  
  
“Alright, Daryl,” Rick said. “You’re on top here which means how fast this goes, how much of me you take at once, all of that is up to you. Don’t do anything that doesn’t feel right. That’s an order.”

Daryl felt like his entire head was empty, like every word he’d ever learned had fallen right out of his ears. He made a noise, something he hoped sounded like an agreement to what Rick had just said. And then he started to lower himself, feeling Rick’s cock slide between the globes of his ass.

He rocked his hips back and forth, trying to align Rick’s cock with his needy hole, all while the feeling of Rick’s erection sliding up and down his slit made his brain feel like a can of silly string thrown into a campfire.

Finally, he felt the head catch on his puckered opening. Sucking in a lungful of air, Daryl focused his eyes on the mirror, slowly exhaling as he began his descent. 

The cock burned a lot more than Rick’s fingers, his muscles protesting against the thick size of the head trying to squeeze past the rim. He kept going, eyelids fluttering at the delicious hurt of it all.

He already loved it. Loved it like he loved sore legs after a day hiking through the woods following a trail. Like he loved the burn in his arms from pulling a bow. Rick was good pain.

Daryl grunted, his body finally giving way and letting the tip of Rick’s erection inside. Behind him, the other man swore and groaned. And it was easy after that to finish sliding down onto Rick. Rapt with attention, he watched the other man’s cock go deeper and deeper in the mirror before pausing at the bottom to enjoy the new sensation that came with being filled.  
  
He had never known anything like it. It felt like for his entire life leading up to that moment, there had been something missing and he’d never realized it. And that something was a dick shoved fully and completely up his asshole. He was never going without one again.  
  
Daryl flexed his muscles around the intrusion intentionally, enjoying the strangled noise Rick made when he did. Another few seconds just feeling it there and then he rose back up carefully before sliding down on it again. It was like being filled up all over again. He repeated, repeated, repeated, speeding up each time until he had a steady bounce going, delighting in impaling himself on Rick over and over.  
  
“Stop,” Rick said. Daryl did almost immediately, whimpering quietly. “Get up.”  
  
He turned back over his shoulder, throwing Rick a pair of hungry, desperate eyes. He was nowhere near done.  
  
“Don’t look at me like that, Sugar,” Rick said. “Just wanna change positions.”  
  
Daryl got up.  
  
Rick grabbed the pile of pillows, quickly shifting them to somewhere more like the center of the bed.  
  
“Chest on those,” Rick said. “Ass up.”  
  
Daryl did it, wiggling his ass in need, keen to have it filled up again and soon. Rick didn’t make him wait long, sinking inside of him within seconds.  
  
“Remember your colors?” Rick asked.  
  
“Colors?” Daryl asked, his brain unfocused. He searched around in his head, trying to find the answer that would please Rick. “Red, yellow, green?”  
  
“Mhm,” Rick said, starting to roll his hips in slow waves. The angle already had him hitting Daryl right where it counted. Jesus, this was gonna be good.  
  
“Mhm. Remember.”  
  
“Good,” Rick said. “Don’t forget ‘em, because I’m about to make good on a promise.”  
  
“Say it,” Daryl said. “Please.”  
  
“What do you want me to say, Daryl?” Rick asked, and somehow he managed to make it sound rhetorical even as he started to pant softly. “That I’m gonna destroy you? That I’m gonna fuck you wide open? That what you wanna hear, Sugar?”  
  
“Don’t stop.”  
  
Rick wrapped his hands around his biceps and squeezed tightly. Daryl’s eyes threatened to roll back in his head. He had never been touched like this. Never would have even guessed that he would like it, but there he was, pushing his ass back onto Rick’s cock like he never wanted it to end.  
  
“I’m gonna tear you open, Sugar,” Rick said, thrusting harder. Daryl moaned, the pressure starting to mount. “Gonna fuck you like the desperate little cock slut that you are. Jesus, look at you wiggling on it. That feel good, Daryl?”  
  
Daryl couldn’t make his tongue move. He nodded instead. Rick’s hand released from his neck, swiping around his head to grip a handful of his hair. He yanked Daryl’s head back roughly. It took a few seconds for the redneck to realize the loud groan he heard had come from his own mouth. Rick held him there with his head back and titled to the side so he could look at him.  
  
“I asked you a question,” Rick said, and it was miraculous that he could even form sentences as hard as he was pounding into Daryl’s ass, skin slapping violently against skin. Daryl made a series of noises that vaguely sounded like syllables.   
  
“Gonna,” Daryl said. In response, Rick spit directly into his mouth. Daryl very nearly came right then.  
  
“Answer me, Daryl and I’ll let you.”  
  
“Can’t...”  
  
“Don’t you dare.”  
  
“Pl-” But Daryl never finished the word, cutting himself off with a gruff moan that rumbled in his chest. His cock twitched steam after stream onto Rick’s sheets. Rick tutted behind him, still thrusting.  
  
“I’m not gonna stop,” Rick said, “You realize that?”  
  
And he didn’t. He kept going, fucking Daryl until the pleasure shifted from glorious to white hot. The redneck snatched at the sheets like he thought he could somehow pull himself off of Rick’s erection. His cock twitched helplessly beneath him.  
  
“Jesus, please.”  
  
“You should’ve answered me,” Rick said. “Been so bad, Daryl. So, so bad.” He reached around and wrapped his fist around Daryl's cock, stroking it while he continued pounding. The redneck sobbed, even as his body tried to keep cumming with nothing left.  
  
Somewhere, he knew he could stop it with one word. But he couldn’t bring himself to say it even if it felt like too much, too much, too much.  
  
“Don’t worry, Sugar,” Rick said. “I’m almost there.”  
  
“Yeah?” Daryl asked, his voice about three octaves higher than normal. “Gonna cum in my—ahfuck—ass?”  
  
“Never thought about cumming anywhere else,” Rick said, slamming into him. “Gonna be good for me from now on?”  
  
“Can’t promise,” Daryl said, biting his bottom lip while he squirmed underneath his lover.  
  
“Good,” Rick said, his fingers steadily tightening their grip on Daryl’s hips.   
  
One thrust, two thrusts, three, five.  
  
“C'mon,” Daryl said. "Want it." But Rick was already gone, his mouth pressed tightly against the back of Daryl’s shoulder, the vibrations from his final moan tickling the hunter's skin. Daryl could feel the cock twitching in his ass while Rick continued to thrust weakly through his orgasm.  
  
When Rick was done, they were still.

The room was quiet save the other man panting hotly in his ear. Letting more of his weight down onto the pillows, Daryl took stock of how he felt. His thighs were sore and his ass ached dully around the intrusion that was Rick’s steadily softening cock, but none of that compared to weightless floaty feeling that had settled in all of his limbs. He wanted to do it again even if he knew his body probably wouldn't let him.   
  
A few more seconds of quiet and Rick softly kissed the back of his neck before pulling out. Daryl felt cum run out of his ass before dripping off his balls. Knees and thighs shaking he rolled over onto his back, feeling the slick of lube and jizz with every movement.

Curling and uncurling his fingers just to remind himself all of it was real, he looked over at Rick. The other man scooped a dribble of cum off the sheets with his own fingers before shoving them between Daryl’s lips. Daryl sucked them clean, memorizing Rick’s taste.

Rick withdrew the digits slowly, stroking them affectionately along Daryl’s bottom lip, and then he settled next to him on the bed. They were quiet, staring at the ceiling while they enjoyed their post-sex bliss.  
  
At some point in the silence, Rick reached over and laced his fingers together with Daryl’s. Daryl absently stroked at them with his thumb, happy at the small amount of physical affection. Just enough considering they were both warm and sweaty. 

It could have been minutes or hours before they spoke. 

“You’re incredible,” Rick mumbled, an air of awe to his words. He let go of Daryl’s hand so he could stroke his damp hair instead.  
  
“Ain’t so bad either.”  
  
Another infinite stretch of silence while Rick stared into his eyes. Daryl studied his face. The subtle creases at the corners of his eyes, the short beard, the waves of his hair, the scar above his brow.   
  
“Your clothes are probably dry now,” Rick said, breaking the quiet again. Daryl frowned.

Sometime in the past several hours, he knew he should have already prepared himself for the possibility that the romp with Rick was a one-time thing. Or maybe a reoccurring booty call if he was lucky. But he hadn't. And now there was Rick hinting that it was time to hit the road. 

At least it had been amazing while it lasted, he guessed.  
  
“Guess you want me to head home,” Daryl said.   
  
“No,” Rick said quickly, before leaning over to kiss his temple. “No, I really don’t.”  
  
“Good,” Daryl said, feeling relieved. “Kinda far.”  
  
Rick twitched his lips into the ghost of a smile.  
  
“Besides,” Rick said. “I think we should get to know each other better, don't you? Considering.”  
  
“Wouldn’t mind that,” Daryl said, settling back down.   
  
“Where’d you get the devils on your back?” Rick asked, trailing fingers up and down his bicep.   
  
“At a shady tattoo parlor behind an even shadier bar,” Daryl said. “Surprised I didn’t get Hep or some shit. Was piss drunk. Didn’t realize back then that a place that’ll tattoo you drunk isn’t the kinda place you wanna get tattooed at.”  
  
Rick hummed quietly.  
  
“And this?” he asked, rubbing a fingertip across the small star on Daryl’s hand.  
  
Daryl looked away from him, focusing on window, lit a faint indigo with the fading sunset. He contemplated telling Rick the story, worrying over whether the truth would change Rick’s mind on wanting him to stick around that night. Or stick around at all.  
  
“Prison,” Daryl finally said. Rick didn't react. Not visibly at least.   
  
“What for?” Rick asked.

“Nothin,” Daryl said. “Wasn’t charged. Blamed for a thing I didn’t…”  
  
“You don’t owe me anything,” Rick said, running his fingers through his hair again.  
  
Daryl met his eyes again. He knew he didn't have to tell him. He never did. But something about Rick’s calm blue eyes made him feel safe. Shit, something about Rick made him feel safe in general.  
  
“My dad was a pretty fucked up individual,” Daryl said. “Always was, but after mom died, he was worse. Hurt us. My brother more than me, but neither of us got off easy.”  
  
Rick didn’t say anything. But he kept stroking Daryl’s hair, maintaining eye contact so Daryl knew he was listening.  
  
“Merle, my brother, he got involved with some biker gang. Meth dealers. Some real biker gang bullshit,” Daryl said. “One day Dad got hard up for cash. Was bad about gambling with men who didn’t take well to not being paid off. Swallowed his pride and went to Merle and asked. Merle told him to go fuck himself and that he’d deserve whatever it got him. So Dad kicked the shit out of him, railed on him for living under his roof half his life and not being willing to pay back a little of what he owed. His words.”  
  
Daryl paused, closing his eyes and focusing on the feeling of Rick’s fingers brushing along his scalp. He took a deep breath and let it out. He had never talked about this with anyone after Ms. Harrison had gotten him off the hook. He had never wanted to.   
  
“Gangs are gangs, ya know?” Daryl said. “Showed up at Dad’s. Back then I still hadn’t figured out how to leave. Like one of them abused housewives or some shit. So I was there for all of it. They were pissed about Merle, started going after Dad with Merle in the middle of the pack. He’d finally had enough, I guess. I figured that they were gonna fuck Dad up bad. Eye for an eye. I didn’t know what to do. Part of me wanted it. Hell, part of me hoped they'd go too far and kill him. The other part of me was terrified. He was still my dad even if he sucked at the job.”  
  
Daryl took another measured breath, nuzzling his head up against Rick’s hand. The other man scratched gently at his scalp.  
  
“What I didn’t expect was for Dad to grab the hunting rifle he kept by his recliner. For him to point it at Merle and pull the trigger without a second thought. Single shot in the barrel. Merle was gone in a second. Then the gang took their eye for an eye.”  
  
“And you were there for all of this?” Rick broke his silence, the even tone of voice soothing like a gentle summer rainstorm pitter-pattering on green leaves.  
  
“Yeah,” Daryl said. “They told me they'd kill me if I did, so I didn't rat them out of the cops. Which meant the cops were free to make me their prime suspect. Easier that way than trying to go after them. Easier to paint me as the fucked up redneck kid who lost his shit. Didn’t help that the house was supposed to go to me with both of them out of the way. Spent three months in prison without bail waiting on a trial before a lawyer actually worth a damn heard about the thing and helped spring me. Got this,” Daryl said, holding up his hand. “And this,” he said, pointing to another star on his collar bone. “They’d burned the house down by the time I got back to it.”  
  
Daryl waited for Rick to speak, the other man’s eyebrows knitted a little more tightly together than he was used to even in the short time he’d known him. He wasn’t sure what he wanted him to say. The most important thing would be that Rick would still want something to do with him after hearing all of it. He could live with anything else but that. Still, he didn’t want pity. God, he didn’t.  
  
“Thank you for telling me all of that, Daryl,” Rick said. “Means a lot that you trust me that much already.”  
  
Daryl let all of the air out of his lungs in one big exhale. His body felt ten pounds lighter by the time he took his next breath.   
  
“Do I get to ask you somethin now?”  
  
“Sure, Daryl,” Rick said.  
  
“Where’d you get this?” the construction worker asked, pressing his thumb against the pink scar over Rick’s eyebrow.  
  
Now it was Rick’s turn to look away, his eyes settling somewhere on the small expanse of sheets between them. Daryl couldn't help but feel a little guilty for asking after watching him react. Even though he’d just opened up and probably done a complete overshare for a first date (Could following someone home from the grocery store and fooling around with them multiple times even be called a date?).   
  
“I’ll tell you,” Rick said, touching Daryl’s hand where it still lingered near his forehead. “Tonight, because you trusted me with yours. But let’s move this to the couch first. Beers and the rest of that Chinese food, and then you can have my story too. Deal?”  
  
Daryl brushed the scar again with his finger before nodding.  
  
“Alright,” Daryl said. “And I’ll take those sweat pants you’ve been tryin to offer me since I got here.”  
  
Rick smiled softly and kissed him before getting up off the bed.

Daryl got up and followed.


	13. XIII

The longer Rick played in his takeout container, the more nervous he felt about opening up and sharing his own terrible memories with Daryl. It felt right after the other man had been so willing to trust him, but he had reservations.   
  
For one, he couldn’t tell the story without revealing he’d been a cop. While he never would’ve locked Daryl away without a proper investigation, he wouldn’t blame the other man one bit if he didn’t trust anyone who’d ever worn a uniform.

Three months could be a long time. Rick knew that well. All he’d done in his coma was relive the horror over and over again. If it existed, he imagined hell was much the same as what he’d been forced to experience.

“You full?” Daryl asked. Rick looked up from the carton of fried rice. He had no idea how long he’d been digging in it without taking a bite.

“Yeah, you want it?” Rick asked, offering the container to him.  
  
“Mhm,” Daryl said, taking it from him. “But that wasn’t why I asked. You don’t gotta tell me, Rick. Whatever it is.”   
  
“I do,” Rick said. “Like I said before, I don’t talk to people enough.”   
  
“Alright,” Daryl said, scooping up a plastic fork full of food. “But you don’t have to do it right now. We just met.”   
  
“Doesn’t feel like it,” Rick said.

Truth be told, it felt like he had and always would know Daryl. He’d arrested some new agey guy once for possession of marijuana who told him his whole philosophy on death and the universe. Hawthorn (whose real name was Richard Bernard James III) told him about reincarnation and this concept that some souls met again and again. Sometimes as lovers, as relatives, or as close friends. Even enemies could fit the bill if they had enough of an impact on you.   
  
Hawthorn was higher than the summit of Everest as he rattled out philosophy from the back of the squad car, but sitting there with Daryl, Rick doubted the concepts a little less. If souls did meet over and over, he would have no trouble believing he already knew this one well. Nerves or not.

“Doesn’t,” Daryl agreed. “Feels like fate or some other bullshit I've never believed in.”   
  
Rick nodded and scratched his beard.

“When were you in prison?” he asked.

“Dad and Merle died January 15, 2014,” Daryl said. “They arrested me later that day. Not sure how long it was before they moved me from county. They put me by myself so everything kinda blurred together.”  
  
The King County Jail and Sheriff’s Office were housed in the same building. Rick knew the blank cement walls and cool iron bars of a standard county lockup. In county, there was no prison library or recreation time unless you were lucky enough to get pulled to mow the lawn. Someone like Daryl wouldn’t have been that lucky. It would have been days of maddening monotony, especially if he’d been isolated.   
  
“Got out the 19th of April,” Daryl said. “Was supposed to be the 18th, but they fucked up my paperwork.  19th was a Saturday and they were gonna make me wait until Monday, but Harrison raked them over the coals.”   
  
“Harrison?” Rick asked.   
  
“My lawyer,” Daryl said. “Would probably still be in there if she hadn’t somehow found out about me. Guess she makes a ton of money usually but has some pet peeve about people sitting in prison without a trial. Lucky me.”   
  
“Hmm,” Rick said. And the two of them fell quiet.   
  
“Why?” Daryl asked. “Why you wanna know when, I mean?”   
  
Rick shook his head. While his and Daryl’s stories were nowhere near the same, the parallels were in some ways almost uncanny.

“I got shot the day after you got arrested,” Rick said. “And I woke up the day you were supposed to get out.”   
  
“Woke up?”   
  
“Coma,” Rick said. He pointed at the scar on his forehead. “One of the bullets went in here and out here.” The exit scar was easy enough to show him by pushing his hair up. It was much bigger than the scar above his brow despite a few surgeries to minimize the cosmetic damage. He had to wear his curls somewhat long to avoid having a bald patch there.   
  
“Shit,” Daryl said, almost laughing. “Don’t know which one of us is more fucked up.”

“Me neither,” Rick said. “Kind of comforting in a way.”   
  
“A little,” Daryl agreed. “You said one though. You get shot more than once?”  
  
“He emptied on me,” Rick said. “Six shooter. I caught five of ‘em.”   
  
“Jesus.”   
  
“Yeah,” Rick said, pointing out the entry and exit scars on his shin and the back of his calf. Then he stood up off the couch, pushing one side of his sweats down to show Daryl the two scars on his hip. Those had hit bone and had no exits. “Sometimes I think it’s probably better I was in the coma while most of this was healing. Not sure which would have been worse.”   
  
“Can I…?” Daryl asked, holding up his fingers. Rick jerked his chin down, and he watched the construction worker reach out, delicately touching the pale pink tissue. The former cop let his eyes float closed, focusing on the feeling of calloused fingers tracing the edges of his personal hell. “Did you know?”   
  
“Hmm?”   
  
“That you were in a coma. They say some people know or some shit.”   
  
“No,” Rick said. “I didn’t.”  
  
“So everything was just blank for three months?”   
  
“I wish,” Rick said. “It was one long nightmare, just reliving getting shot over and over.”

“Shit,” Daryl said, looking up at Rick with eyes full of genuine empathy. It was a nice change, he decided. While he hadn’t told very many people, the ones who did know looked at him with pity or discomfort. Two years had made him tired of both.

“Why’d he shoot at you?” Daryl asked. Rick’s nerves prickled up again. He sat back down on the couch.   
  
“Daryl, if you feel different about me after this, I’d get it,” Rick said. “I just want you to know that.”   
  
“What do you mean?” Daryl’s brow furrowed. “Weren’t in a gang, were you?”   
  
Rick shook his head, looking down at the mottled heather gray of his pants.   
  
“I was a cop,” he said, pausing to let the information sink in before he finished the whole story. He waited, for Daryl to say it was okay or for Daryl to say it wasn’t. When he finally found the courage to glance up, he found Daryl’s eyes trained on the coffee table. He wished for a brief moment that he could hear the other man’s thoughts, for any hint that it might be okay.   
  
Maybe it was just having someone around who he could talk to without it feeling exhausting, but it was a little scary how much he already didn’t want to lose him.

“Daryl...”   
  
“That’s one hell of a career change,” Daryl said, finally meeting his eyes again. Rick felt a profound sense of relief.   
  
“Didn’t mean to do it permanently,” Rick said. “Needed the money. But then I was good at it and the money was more than I would've made somewhere else.”   
  
“You were. Are,” Daryl said. “Good at it, I mean. Real good.”   
  
“I never would’ve done that to you,” Rick said. “I need to say that.”   
  
Daryl looked at him again, and Rick had the feeling that his entire soul was being given a once-over, like Daryl had managed to look inside of him and turn the contents of his entire being over to look at the secrets hidden underneath.   
  
“I believe you,” Daryl said. “Wish you’d been there that day.”   
  
“I wish I had too,” Rick said. “Would’ve met you sooner, and we’d probably both be a little better off.”   
  
“So the guy just wanted to kill a cop?” Daryl asked.   
  
“Maybe,” Rick said. “He was high and had clearly been using for a long time. My partner and I responded to a call about a suspicious subject at the gas station. He saw the uniforms and took off running. We both chased him, but I was faster. Bastard drew on me as soon as I caught up.”

“You’re right,” Daryl said. “It is kind of comforting, not being the only one who has all this shit up here.” The construction worker swirled a hand around his head, and Rick felt an overwhelming need to reach for it, so he did, taking it and lacing his fingers between work-worn digits.   
  
It felt right. Daryl must have agreed, because he bent his fingers and squeezed gently. The space where their palms met felt warm and safe.   
  
“I feel like I should say somethin,” Rick said, resting their hands on his knee. Daryl shifted closer to avoid having to stretch his arm so much. Rick's knee pressed against his thigh. “But I don’t know what it is.”

“Never was good at talkin.”   
  
“Guess I’ll try something else then,” Rick said, pulling his hand free of the tangle. He reached up and grabbed Daryl’s chin before leaning in and kissing him. A proper kiss this time, the kind that made his stomach and his bones tingle.  
  
Daryl sighed happily into his mouth before returning it, tongues sliding delicately across one another. Somewhere a clock ticked lazily, the second hand not caring one bit how long they stayed like that before Rick finally pulled back.   
  
“I’m tired,” he said, resting his forehead against Daryl’s. “You?”   
  
“Yeah,” Daryl said.   
  
“What do you say we get that other load of clothes in the dryer and go lay down?”   
  
“Never really slept over with someone before,” Daryl said. “Not like…”   
  
“Already had sex with me, and you’re worried you’ll mess up the cuddle?” Rick asked.   
  
“A little.”   
  
Rick kissed him again.   
  
“I’m sure you’re a natural,” Rick said, smoothing Daryl’s hair back. “But I snore, so if you ditch me in the middle of the night for the couch, I won’t cry about it. There’s blankets stashed in the cabinet next to the TV.”   
  
“Good to know,” Daryl said. “Got no idea if I snore.”   
  
Rick stood up, offering him his hand.  
  
“If I make fun of you in the morning, you’ll know.”   
  
“Ass,” Daryl said, but he accepted the hand and stood up.   
  
Rick fell asleep that night with Daryl’s head nestled on the crook of his arm. It fit well.   
  



	14. XIV

Daryl slept comfortably in his new surroundings. Until he didn't.

Rick was warm and smelled like salt, and the construction worker could hear the other man's heartbeat faintly where his ear pressed into the side of his chest. It didn’t hurt either that Rick had a real mattress where Daryl was used to sleeping on the futon. He had gotten so accustomed to the feeling of the bars pushing through the mattress that he’d forgotten how comfortable a real bed could be.   
  
It would have been the best night’s sleep he’d had in his life if Rick hadn’t woken him up by squeezing him so hard he couldn’t breathe. Sometime during the night, they’d shifted and Rick had wrapped himself entirely around Daryl’s body like a hungry boa constrictor.   
  
“Rick,” Daryl hissed, his cheek squished against the other man’s bare sternum. One of his ribs throbbed sharply. Rick squeezed even harder.   
  
“Your life will be over,” Rick muttered. It was a comforting thing to hear given that Daryl felt like his soul was about to pop right out of his eyeballs. Still, something told him Rick wasn’t talking to him.   
  
The former cop’s whole body twitched, and he dug the pads of his fingers into Daryl’s flesh like he was trying to use him to pull himself back to a reality he couldn’t seem to find.   
  
“Rick,” Daryl said, trying to get enough air into his lungs to speak in something other than a whisper. He could guess what was happening in the other man’s head. After all, he had his own nightmares.

Rick’s body spasmed again. And again. And again.   
  
On the last twitch, he jolted awake, gasping like he was coming up for air after a leap off the high dive.  
  
“It wasn’t real,” Daryl murmured, relieved when Rick’s grip loosened slightly. Still, Rick didn’t let go. “Was just a nightmare.”   
  
“Daryl,” Rick said, like he was remembering something he’d temporarily forgotten.   
  
“Daryl,” he said, confirming it.   
  
“Can you reach the light?” Rick asked. “Please.”   
  
But he didn’t let go of him. Daryl gently pried at his arms, rubbing the skin there with his thumbs as he tugged.   
  
“Gotta be able to move,” Daryl said. Rick went slack, letting him break free. Daryl reached for the bed side lamp, groping around for the switch and turning it on. Squinting at the light, he turned away from it and back to the man beside him. The former cop was covered in a thin layer of sweat.   
  
“Wasn’t real,” Daryl said again.   
  
Rick nodded, reaching out to take his hand. Daryl let him, watching as his sleeping partner studied it, tracing his knuckles and veins.   
  
“Academy students should look professional and well groomed at all times,” Rick said, running his finger over the lines of Daryl’s palm. Daryl didn’t ask him what he was doing or why. Whatever Rick needed to do after that, he was okay with it.

“Black cargo slacks and a uniform shirt complete with all appropriate patches and insignias will be worn to all classes unless….” Rick dragged his fingertips up Daryl’s forearm, tracing the faint blue under his skin. “Unless otherwise specified by an instructor.”

Daryl trembled a little at the feeling of Rick brushing his inner elbow. He never would’ve guessed the skin there was so sensitive.   
  
“Everything should be clean and neatly pressed,” Rick said, and then he leaned forward into Daryl, pressing his face into his neck and inhaling deeply. Daryl wrapped his arms around the other man loosely, not sure what else to do.   
  
The construction worker waited patiently while Rick mumbled stuff about boots and hairstyles, his lips brushing softly against his skin. And then he waited some more, not wanting to interrupt whatever this process was. It felt sacred in some strange, undefinable way.   
  
“Rick?” he said quietly after some time had passed.   
  
“Sorry for waking you,” came the reply, the other man sitting back up. “Wish I could say it won’t happen again if we keep seeing each other, but it probably will.”   
  
“It’s alright,” Daryl said. “I get ‘em too. Nightmares, I mean.” He thought about making a joke about Rick squeezing him so tight, but decided against it. He’d never been in bed with another person when he had one of his nightmares, so he couldn’t exactly say he wouldn’t have done the same.   
  
“Sorry to hear that,” Rick said. “But I can see why you would.”   
  
“What was all the stuff you were sayin about clothes?” Daryl asked.   
  
“Thing the shrink told me to do,” Rick said. “Going over something I remember. Touching and feeling where I am. Smelling and tasting too if they’re an option. Helps me remember which thing is real. Helps me calm down too, not dwelling on it.”   
  
Daryl looked down at his hand. He swore he could faintly feel where the other man had traced every line. Rick had needed to remember what was real, and he’d chosen Daryl. Something felt significant about that, but maybe it had just been the result of simple proximity.   
  
“Might have to try some of that,” Daryl said. “Had a counselor for a second in county. I know I’m dreaming when I’m in there, but I can’t do anything to stop it. Guess knowin is better than nothin though.”   
  
“What’s something you remember really well?” Rick asked. “Something that doesn’t remind you of… It can be just about anything. Instructions. Directions. Bible verses, even.”   
  
Daryl laughed.   
  
“My dad used to make up his own,” Daryl said. “Pretty far from anything Jesus ever would’ve taught.”   
  
“Do I even wanna know?”   
  
“’In the beginning the Lord created the heavens and the earth and, his most perfect creation, the first pair of tits.’”

“That’s really...something,” Rick said.   
  
“’For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Jesus our Lord,” Daryl remembered. “So sin all you fucking want as long as you remember to kiss God’s pristine white ass every now and then.’”   
  
“Wow.”   
  
“That probably shouldn’t be my thing,” Daryl said. “Don’t know if I believe in God after everything, but might be best not to chance it.”

“Pretty sure if there’s anything else besides us, God or not, they’d still hate that.”   
  
“I hope so,” Daryl said. “I like to think he’s as deep into hell as you can get. Shoved right up the devil’s asshole with Judas and Hilter.”  
  
“What about something with work?” Rick suggested, quietly changing the subject. “You have a safety checklist or something?”   
  
“Not really,” Daryl said. “Wear the right safety equipment and don’t be an idiot. I know the foremen have a list, but I’m just a guy.”

“Hobbies?”  
  
“Lately, pretty much just jerkin off to your voice,” Daryl said. Rick rewarded him with a soft smile that temporarily hid the weariness in his eyes. “Glad I finally met you by the way. Bank account was gettin’ tight. Real tight.”

“Glad I finally met you too,” Rick said. “Was probably about one more phone call from just giving you my address and hoping for the best.”

“The best being my ass?” Daryl asked.   
  
“Thought it was at the time,” Rick said. “Right now I think it might just be you.”

Daryl felt his lips twitch at the corners despite the somberness he and Rick were currently dwelling in.

“Gettin sentimental on me?”   
  
“What’d you do before you made questionable financial decisions just to get off on me?”   
  
“Working. Sleeping. Drinking at Mick’s Bar,” Daryl said.   
  
“And before that?” Rick asked, and Daryl wasn’t sure anymore if this was about him finding his own tether to reality or if Rick just genuinely wanted to know. Maybe a bit of both.

“Hunted and fished and camped in the woods behind my dad’s trailer,” Daryl said. “Spent more time out there than I ever did at home.”   
  
“My daddy was like that,” Rick said. “He’d take us on fishing and camping trips every chance he got, insisted on us learning things like making a fire the old fashioned way and what mushrooms and berries were safe to eat.”   
  
“Got all that from my uncle,” Daryl said. “Dad insisted it was a waste of time when you could walk into the Exxon down the street and get a loaf of bread. Uncle Jess was convinced we’d be dealing with zombies or lizard people any minute.”

“He sounds like fun at parties.” Rick shifted, pulling his pillows up and fluffing them behind his back so he could sit upright comfortably. “My dad insisted we learn two knots and only two. The Palomar and the bowline. The latter was his favorite. Used it for everything."  
  
“Always favored the triple overhand noose,” Daryl said. “Mostly because it’s quick and easy but still strong. Depends though. Bowline's a good one too.”

“How do you tie the noose?” Rick asked, reaching across the sheets between them to rest his hand on Daryl’s forearm. The construction worker wasn’t used to things like that, to having someone touch him just because they could. He wasn’t entirely sure he hated it.   
  
“Make a loop, wrap it three times, pull it back through, and snug her up.”   
  
“How many knots do you know?” Rick asked. “More than me, I’m guessing.”   
  
“Enough to school an Eagle Scout.”

“I’m not a shrink,” Rick said. “Got no idea if it’ll work for you, but maybe you should try the knots. As your thing, I mean."   
  
“I will.” Daryl looked down at the fingers curled loosely over his skin. He could feel the warmth of the other man seeping into his skin. “Can’t hurt to try.”   
  
Rick hummed quietly before leaning back against the headboard and closing his eyes, exposing the gorgeous column of his throat. Something about the image was quietly breathtaking, and Daryl found himself in a state of subdued awe. It was the same way he felt standing beneath the thick, sturdy branches of an ancient oak.   
  
Even with the quiet hurt of the nightmare bubbling away inside of him, Rick still felt steady and sure.

“Daryl,” Rick said, breaking the hunter’s trance.   
  
“Mhm?”   
  
“Thank you,” he said.   
  
“You ready to go back to sleep?” Daryl asked, his eyes starting to feel heavy again.   
  
“Mind if we leave the light on?” Rick sat up, pulling his hand away so he could rearrange his pillows once more. He slid down onto his back. 

“Not even a little,” Daryl said, settling down and burrowing his face into the crook of the other man’s neck. The faint remnants of some kind of cologne curled into his nostrils, and he sighed contentedly before letting himself drift back off toward sleep.

He thought he felt Rick press a kiss into his temple before dreams took him, but maybe that itself was only a dream. As long as there were no more nightmares that night, Daryl would take it.   
  



	15. XV

Rick woke to the morning sun creeping in through the curtains and streaking gentle warmth across his feet. Next to him, Daryl slept soundly, his closed eyelids fluttering softly with a dream. He sighed, the tiniest little moan coming out with his breath, and Rick smiled fondly at the sound, wondering what the other man was dreaming about. Whatever it was, he hoped it was happy and unburdened, especially after the way he’d woken him up the night before.

As gently as he could, he rolled onto his side, settling down on his pillow where he was content to doze on and off, alternating between cat naps and watching Daryl sleep. It had been an awful long time since he’d had another person in his bed.

Daryl was more than worth the wait.

Time passed slowly, its march revealed only in the dust motes swirling in the golden rays dancing in through the window. When the sunlight had finally shifted from a gentle morning yellow to an approaching-noon white, Daryl stirred. Eyelids eased open, and Rick smiled at the sapphire blues peeking out between them.

“Good morning,” the operator said quietly, moving his hand up to sweep the dark hair off of the other man’s forehead. With his sleepy eyes and messy bedhead, he was an absolute vision. A small voice in the back of Rick’s head told him falling in love was inevitable, inviting him to take stock of whether or not that was what he really wanted before it was too late.

“Mornin,” Daryl mumbled, scooting over to bury his face into Rick’s chest. He sighed before saying something that sounded like, “Smm gmm.” 

“What’s that, darlin?” Rick asked, gently nudging the other man’s large shoulder to turn him back over. The small voice was probably right, and he found he didn’t mind the notion in the slightest.

“Said you smell good.” Daryl pressed his nose into the dip of Rick’s sternum and inhaled again before turning to look at him. He was very nearly smiling, his blue eyes untroubled and lighter than Rick was used to.

“You’re cute in the morning,” Rick said, brushing the other man’s hair with his fingers once more. One side of it stuck up in odd angles, the wisps at the bottom even more pronounced after a night of sleeping on them. He wondered how Daryl styled his hair normally. He seemed like a shower and go kind of guy. 

“You’re cute all the time,” Daryl shot back. 

“Little flirt,” Rick teased. 

“Little?” Daryl scoffed. “I’m bigger than you, Rick.”

“Only in the shoulders. Not that I’m complaining.” He slid his hand on top of the other man’s, which was currently resting atop Rick’s stomach. Then he trailed his hand up, squeezing a path along the massive biceps toward his neck. He mmm’d softly as he kneaded along the curvature between. Daryl squirmed. 

“Sorry,” Rick said, pulling his hand back. 

“For?” 

“You seemed uncomfortable.” 

“Kinda,” Daryl said. “But not in a bad way.”

“Hmm?” Rick rubbed Daryl’s arm again, tickling the skin. The construction worker squirmed again, and that time Rick felt the other man’s half-hard cock brush against his thigh. He chuckled quietly, moving his leg to rub it against Daryl’s budding erection.

It was the hunter’s turn to say, “Sorry.” 

“Shh,” Rick said, turning and shifting until the two of them were face to face. He snaked his hand down between them, cupping Daryl through his borrowed sweat pants and rubbing until his half-erection become a whole one. 

“Shit,” Daryl said, bucking forward into Rick’s grip. “Do you want me...are you…?” 

“I am,” Rick said. He could feel his own cock pressing into the fabric of his underwear, blood flooding into it the minute he realized Daryl was turned on. “You can if you want to. But you just woke up.” 

“Gentleman, huh?” Daryl joked, already fumbling around for the elastic waistband of Rick’s pants. He slipped his hand inside and wrapped his fingers around the shaft, squeezing and tugging down his length. Rick mirrored the action. 

“If we’d just met,” Rick said, his eyes fluttering at the feeling of Daryl jerking him off, “and I hadn’t already known what I know about you, I’d swear you’d been doing this your whole life.” 

“Swear you had too,” Daryl said, biting his lip and moaning when Rick gave a firm squeeze near the head of his cock.

“That right?” Rick asked, leaning forward to claim Daryl’s mouth before he could answer. Their kiss tasted like morning breath, but he didn’t care, slicking his tongue over the other man’s while he massaged the full length of his erection, the sweater-like lining of the sweatpants hot on the back of his hand.

Daryl broke the kiss, pressing his forehead against Rick’s and panting hot. The former cop closed his eyes, listening to the other man’s heavy breaths while they jerked each other off in their would-be pajamas. Quietly hissing Rick's name, the hunter rolled his hips, meeting the former cop's every stroke, and Rick reciprocated, doing the same to his.

“Gonna,” Daryl muttered quietly, his head thrashing a bit on his pillow. Rick forced his eyes to stay open long enough to take in the way the other man looked as he neared orgasm, his eyebrows knitting together, his mouth opening and closing and opening, Adam’s apple bobbing with a forced swallow before he sucked in a breath and held onto it in concentration.

“There you go,” Rick said, the words edged with a growl as he got closer to his own release. “Cum for me, Sugar.”

It wasn’t lost on him that Daryl would be soiling a pair of his own pants, marking them with sticky cum that Rick would always imagine was still there no matter how many times they were washed. The thought made him lean forward and find the other man’s lips, sloppily kissing and nipping at them while he rubbed faster.

Daryl slacked off on his end as he neared orgasm, forcing Rick to buck faster into his hand to keep the momentum going. He didn’t mind at all, so long as it meant that he was truly enjoying himself. 

“Fuck,” Daryl said, the word catching in the back of his throat and coming out a few octaves higher than it usually would.

“We will later,” Rick said, forcing his voice so low he felt it rumbling in his own chest. Daryl pressed his forehead against his again, nuzzling against it for a moment before his head rolled back, hair splaying out on the pillow.

A series of staccato whines marked Daryl’s orgasm, his cock twitching in Rick’s hand as it emptied into the borrowed pants, cum slicking across the back of the operator’s hand as he stroked him through every last twitch.

“Stop,” Daryl whispered quietly, moaning softly the second the word finished leaving his lips. Rick slowly dragged his hand back up one more time before releasing him and easing his hand out of the elastic. The other man had stopped reciprocating entirely, his fingers loose around him as he panted on the mattress.

But Rick was patient. Patient enough to lay there and rut into loose fingers until Daryl came back to his senses enough to squeeze his hand around him. It didn’t take long, his grip tightening back up within seconds.

The construction worker rolled toward Rick, staring at him intensely while he worked his length. Rick was fascinated, both by the determination written in his eyes and by the up-and-down movement of the fabric below his waist. He alternated between watching both, struggling to keep his eyes open as the other man stroked him closer and closer to the finish line.

“Close,” Rick said, half-groaning the word. “Real close.”

Even as he concentrated on the building pressure at every swipe of Daryl’s fist, he managed to wrap a hand around the other man’s neck, pulling him close enough to press their lips together. He hummed with pleasure as they met, lips tickling with the vibrations before they split apart to allow tongues to slip into one another’s mouths.

Daryl picked up speed, and Rick raked his stubby fingernails over the nape of his neck, moaning low into his mouth, hips bucking feverishly in time with Daryl’s calculated strokes. But it was the sounds, not the movement itself, that took him over the edge. The wet smacking sounds of sloppy lust-ridden kisses, Daryl’s quiet appreciative mm'ing at every sound or movement Rick made, clothes and sheets rustling, the distinct schk-schk sound of the friction between Daryl’s hand and his cock.

Rick groaned roughly into the cavity of Daryl’s mouth, sure that the other man could probably feel the sound waves reverberating down in his chest. And then he came, spurting cum into his own pants before Daryl cupped a palm over the tip, catching some of his release in his fingers.

When he was done, the kiss broken, he watched Daryl carefully slip free of the elastic. Blue eyes concentrated back on his matching pair, and then the construction worker licked his hand clean, white streaking across his pretty pink tongue. And Rick was pretty sure he was never going to need to watch another porn as long as he lived, not with that image firmly embedded in his mind.

Hell, if it was the last thing he saw someday when his life flashed before his eyes, he was going to go into the afterlife or lack thereof pleased with a life well lived.

“Jesus, you’re perfect,” he panted, pulling Daryl into another kiss and tasting himself on the other man’s tongue.

“We’re goin through a lot of pants,” Daryl said, squirming uncomfortably before deciding he might as well just take them off. Rick joined him, pulling his own pants off and laying beside him naked. It felt easy and right being next to Daryl, clothes or not.

“Yeah, I feel like if I had to cart laundry out of the apartment, we’d be a little more careful.”

“Like that you don’t,” Daryl says. “Feels...” He trailed off, chewing on his lip, and Rick couldn’t wait until the day he finally broke down all of this wonderful creature’s inhibitions. Though he had to admit the pink creeping across his tanned cheeks as he thought whatever filthy things he was thinking was endearing as hell.

“Dirty in a good way?” Rick supplied, reaching over to brush fingers through Daryl’s messy hair.

“Yeah,” Daryl said. “You’re good at makin things feel like that.”

“And you’re good at being filthy for me,” Rick said. “Think we’ll have a lot of fun together. If you want that.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Daryl said. “Already know I do.” A reluctance in the other man’s eyes told Rick he wanted to say something else, but before the former cop could start to analyze the secrets hidden in Daryl's silence, he was interrupted by the construction worker's stomach giving a distinct growl from the other side of the bed. Daryl fidgeted uncomfortably, and Rick glanced at the clock on the bedside table, instantly surprised his own stomach wasn’t yelling too. Between napping alongside Daryl and getting each other off, it was already well past noon.

“You wanna order pizza?” Rick asked. “All I have is frozen dinners and a jar of questionable pickles.”

“Frozen’s fine,” Daryl said. “Ain’t exactly eatin caviar and crackers over at my place.”

Rick reluctantly crawled out of his bed, finding another couple pairs of sweats in his chest of drawers. He tossed one at Daryl, unable to stop the little ache in his chest when the other man tugged them on. He looked good in his clothes, and good in general, bare from the waist up with the gray pants slung across his hips. Down the side of the right leg, faded green and black letters said King County High.

For a brief moment, Rick wanted to tell him he loved him, so much so that he felt the words form on his lips, ready to be set free. But of course he didn’t love him, not yet at least. It was a fleeting feeling, a glimpse at a future that could and probably would become a reality, the bud of possibility already putting down roots in his chest.

He crossed the room to kiss Daryl feverishly against the bedside table, the alarm clock falling to the floor as they fisted each other’s hair.

“Alright,” Rick said, forcing his mouth away from the other man's. Daryl’s fingers came out of his waves slowly, like they were attached with velcro and had to be tugged free. “Let’s get some food in our systems. Something tells me we’ll need the energy.”

Daryl’s eyes glinted darkly, the hint of a smile hidden somewhere in the waves of his ocean irises. He nodded once and followed Rick into the tiny kitchen.

Frozen meatloaf had never tasted so good.


	16. XVI

Rick’s apartment was homey in a way that Daryl had never quite achieved. Where his own walls were still the same bare white they’d been when he moved in, Rick had at least attempted to decorate. There were the photos of his son Daryl had already talked to him about. On top of that, Rick’s TV cabinet held a small array of knick knacks including a little cowboy statue and a softball trophy for his former police department. Even his coffee table held signs of life in the form of a “Greetings from Las Vegas” coaster and a cinnamon-scented candle.

The humanity of it all was comforting in a way that Daryl’s Spartan existence wasn’t, and he was torn between the want to add things to his own space and the desire to never leave Rick’s.

“Found dessert,” Rick said, when the empty trays of frozen meals had been tucked into an overflowing trash bin. He tossed Daryl a packaged oatmeal cream pie and plopped down next to him, their thighs touching casually in a way that made the construction worker’s stomach flip flop.  

“Thanks,” he said, tearing open the package with his teeth. It took about two bites to eat it all, sugary cream coating his tongue. When he’d finished licking the remnants off his fingers, he looked back up at Rick, carefully tearing bites off and pushing them into his mouth. Cream smeared his fingertips, and Daryl couldn’t stop his brain from taking off in at least two unwholesome directions.

In one daydream, he licked Rick’s digits clean, the suggestion of it leading to his head in Rick’s lap and Rick’s fingers tangled in his hair. In another, Rick casually fingered his own cum into the hunter's ass.

Daryl cleared his throat.

“You alright?” Rick asked, nudging his leg with his own while he took another bite of his pie.

“Yeah. Just tryin to...” Daryl trailed off, shaking his head and sighing. “Just tryin to go five minutes without stickin my hand in your pants.”

“I see,” Rick said, taking the opportunity to lick the cream off his fingers, the deliberate flicks of his tongue making Daryl swallow thickly. “You don’t have to stop yourself, you know.”

“Who’s the chick?” Daryl asked, nodding at a framed photo above Rick’s computer that he hadn't noticed before. In it, a woman stood next to Rick on a lawn surrounded by other people, some mere specks in the background. Her hair was long and dark, contrasting with the white tee shirt she wore over blue jean shorts. Her smile stood out the most though, wide and bright and showing all her perfect teeth. 

“My ex wife, Lori,” he said, when he figured out where Daryl was looking.

“You keep pictures of your ex wife on your wall?”

“Only that one,” he said. “It’s more about who isn’t in the picture than who is.”

“Hmm?”

“Fourth of July picnic. The day she told me she was pregnant with Carl,” he said. “Also the day Leon Bassett somehow shot himself in the ass with his own police revolver trying to impress Stacy Wilkes, but that’s another story entirely.”

“I see,” Daryl said, because the reason he kept it hanging up did make sense. For Rick to hold onto the memory of the day he found out he was going to become a father was actually pretty sweet.

“Plus Carl likes to see it,” he added. “Shows that Mom and Dad don’t hate each other, I guess.”

“Sorry,” Daryl said, feeling like he’d almost torn open a wound. He and Rick both had enough open wounds already.

“Don’t be,” Rick said, crumpling up the wrapper from his cookie. He reached for Daryl’s trash too, his fingers softly slipping into his palm to collect it. They lingered on the withdrawal, and Rick lightly squeezed the construction worker's fingertips before hopping up to dispose of them both. It was a simple action, but it felt reassuring all the same. 

“It’s a nice apartment,” Daryl said, when he’d come back from the tiny kitchen.

“It works,” Rick said. “No bugs except the occasional spider, and I don’t feel like Carl’s gonna get shot when he comes to visit. Easy commute too.”

“Really?” Daryl asked. “Can’t believe you were so close to me all those times we talked.”

“I can’t believe we probably passed each other a hundred times and never noticed.”

“I maybe noticed,” Daryl said. “But I didn’t know you were you.”

“Wait,” Rick said, shifting to sit sideways on the couch, a faint smile on his face. He nudged Daryl's leg with his own again. “You noticed me?”

Daryl looked down, biting his bottom lip. 

“Yeah, at the store a few times. Thought you were hot as fuck in those damn black jeans.” The admission made Daryl's cheeks warm, and he pulled his thumb into his mouth and worried at the skin. When he looked back up at Rick, he found him smiling wider, the light in his blue eyes enough to stop time.

“Well shit, Sugar,” Rick said. “Wish you’d said something.”

“Wish I had too,” Daryl said. “But I didn’t know you were, you know. Figured even if you were, you’re kinda out of my league.”

Rick’s brow furrowed at that, and he shook his head, leaning forward and putting his hand on Daryl's knee. 

“Well for starters, I’m not,” Rick said. “Already told you that you’re the most gorgeous thing I’ve ever been near. But if I am, then fuck however those leagues are divided, because the only one I wanna be in right now is the one where you’re playin.”

The words hit Daryl right in the chest, and he had to dip his head both to hide his reaction and to hide from the intensity displayed in Rick’s baby blues. The operator meant every single word, and his eyes burned with them. Daryl fidgeted, lost in knowing how to respond. 

“Hey,” Rick said, two of his fingers slipping under Daryl’s chin to encourage him to look back up. Daryl let him guide his gaze, locking eyes with Rick’s once again. They’d softened, but they were still earnest in a way that the construction worker couldn’t deny. “I like you, Daryl. And I don’t give a shit about whether or not I’m supposed to.”

“I like you too,” Daryl said, and he meant it. He’d only really known Rick for all of twenty-four hours, and he already felt an unwavering connection between them. A bond formed of barbed wire and steel that would not be easily severed. Or at least he wanted to believe they had that. Especially after the previous night, after learning that Rick could understand him in ways no one else could. 

He’d always scoffed at the idea of soulmates, but with Rick they seemed not only possible, but probable. And that feeling scared the shit out of him, because if he let himself believe that and he was wrong, then Rick could very well destroy him. Or they’d destroy each other. Like two speeding trains colliding, decimating everything around them. 

“I’d like to see where this goes,” Rick said. “If you’re willing.”

“I am,” Daryl said. He let Rick lean forward and kiss him softly. His lips still tasted vaguely like sugar.

“Should I take you on a proper date then?” Rick asked. “Shit, have you ever even...” Rick stopped himself, like he thought the question was insensitive. “Never mind.” 

Daryl didn't mind so much that he'd almost asked. After all, Rick knew he'd never been with anyone before, not like he'd wanted to be anyway. It wasn't a stretch to assume he'd never dated anyone like he'd wanted either. 

“I haven’t,” Daryl said. “But I’d rather stay in.”

“Got a ton of movies,” Rick said. “And an embarrassing amount of gay porn considering I just started watching it when you started callin. Research, or so I told myself.”

Daryl laughed in the form of a hiss of air through his teeth.

“You _researched_ by watching gay porn?” he asked.

“Well, technically no,” Rick said. “More like I didn’t think before I searched for things.”  
  
“And then it was there, so you had to watch it.”

“Of course.”

“Makes sense,” Daryl said, enjoying the mental image of Rick jerking it in the black office chair shoved under the desk in the corner. “And when you searched for it again?”

Rick shrugged.

“Do you wanna see my favorite?” he asked. “Or we can just watch a DVD. Guess I should try to avoid putting my hand down your pants every five minutes too.”

Daryl didn't even hesitate before answering. 

“Show me." 

He let Rick lead him to the computer in the corner of his living room, the man sitting down and pulling Daryl into his lap. The computer was already booted up, and a quick swipe of Rick’s mouse brought the black screen back to life. Rick clicked his name on the login screen, struggling to reach around Daryl’s waist to type in the password.

The anticipation of watching porn with him and knowing it would likely result in sex had Daryl’s cock hardening already. He concentrated on breathing steadily while Rick dove deep into his bookmarks. The operator had clearly gone to great lengths to hide his porn folder just in case someone else ended up on his account. Six folders deep in its own section labeled “taxes,” was a long list of links Rick had clearly renamed so he’d know what they were.

His mouse skirted over the one labeled “lip ring beach” before clicking onto the one he’d called “dom sub snake tattoo.”

The video had no preamble, starting immediately on a close-up image of a cock buried inside of another man. Daryl’s breath hitched, and he felt Rick’s arm tighten around his waist as the camera panned out, revealing two guys fucking outside on a glass-topped table. One had a snake tattoo on his thigh. The other, a graying beard that Daryl wouldn’t have minded rubbing his cheek against.

“Yeah, you’re takin like a proper slut,” gray beard said, thrusting deeply into snake boy, who was drooling all over the table. Daryl stared, transfixed. Behind him, Rick’s breathing grew more shallow, and the former cop leaned forward, his own beard scraping against Daryl’s neck.

Gray beard kept plunging, his cock disappearing inside snake boy’s body, then reappearing, then disappearing again.

“Want more. Fuck me harder,” snake boy begged, wiggling his ass back onto the man’s every movement.

“Yeah, you’ve got a greedy little asshole,” gray beard said, grabbing hold of his hips and fucking him wildly, the garden table rocking precariously beneath them. They kept going, snake boy begging and gray beard spewing the sexiest filth from his mouth. And Daryl was so focused on how hot the whole thing was that he didn’t notice Rick’s hand sliding down his body until he firmly squeezed his erection through borrowed pants.

Daryl’s whole body jolted, his hips bucking up into the touch.

“Easy,” Rick said, voice low in his ear. He kept rubbing as they watched the two men go at it. Daryl wriggled, both into Rick’s touch and to feel his erection pressing against his ass.

“Tear me open,” snake boy demanded, and Rick slipped his hand under the waistband, gripping him firmly. Daryl wriggled again, partially because it was the only reciprocation he could manage in their current position. Rick rocked against him, stroking his cock with torturously slow movements.

“That needy fuckhole of yours just cannot get enough,” gray beard said, grunting and growling. He pried snake boy’s ass apart and pulled out all the way, the camera perfectly capturing the gaping hole before he spit on it and slid back inside, violently fisting a clump snake boy’s hair, his hips slapping roughly against his ass with every buck.

Rick let go of his cock right as gray beard fish-hooked his lover's mouth. Daryl whined quietly.

“Shh,” Rick said, his breath ghosting against the shell of Daryl’s ear. “Stand up, Sugar.”

Daryl stood, his eyes still on the screen while Rick guided his body left with hands on his hips. A single palm between his shoulder blades encouraged Daryl to bend over the desk next to the computer, and Rick turned the monitor so they could both still see before pushing Daryl’s sweats down.

Fingertips dragged up and down the slit of his ass, gently brushing his hole and drawing teasing patterns on his balls. 

“Stay,” Rick said, kissing the back of Daryl’s neck. And Daryl could feel him leave, his fingertips and his presence both momentarily gone. But not for long.

“You want me to cum, you filthy fucking whore?” gray beard asked. Rick was back before snake boy could tell him to fill his hole. It took a great deal of concentration for Daryl to focus on two things at once, on the men climaxing on the screen, on the dribble of white flowing out of snake boy’s ass, on the sound of a bottle cap popping behind him, a quiet but distinctive squirt.

The porn ended, and there was nothing but silence from the computer, and uneven breathing from both him and Rick. 

“Did you see where I kept them?” Rick asked. There was a moment of silence before Daryl answered. It took him that long for the words to register.

“Mhm.”

“Pick one,” Rick said. And so Daryl did, awkwardly grabbing the mouse and navigating through Rick’s maze of bookmarks.

One stood out in particular. It was just two words: baseball bat. Intrigued, Daryl clicked it.

“Good choice,” Rick said, stroking lubricant onto Daryl’s pucker.

The porn started with a man at the batting cages. His wrist wrapped in tape, he hit ball after ball, biceps bulging, sweat beading on his forehead.

He was hot in a more traditional way, with a sculpted jaw and buzzed light brown hair. More swings, and the camera panned out to another man hiding in the shadows, watching him, clearly aroused.

Daryl’s brows knitted together right around the time that Rick pushed two fingers inside, working them in and out with easy strokes. The video continued alternating between the two men, until the machine stopped spitting out baseballs.

The batter smiled before abandoning his bat on a nearby bench and leaving the scene. Stalker boy waited, peering out of his hiding place and squinting after him, not emerging until he was gone.

Checking once more to make sure he was alone, he picked up the bat, running his fingers down it. It was then Daryl that realized where the film was going.

“Is he gonna…?”

“Hmm?” Rick gently pushed down on Daryl’s prostate, massaging it with his fingers. Daryl mm’d softly, closing his eyes and enjoying it, until someone besides him or Rick moaned. He popped his lids back open to find stalker boy slowly lowering himself onto the bat. Not the handle end either. He was steadily working his ass down onto the thick girth on the opposite side.

“Jesus,” Daryl said, in awe. And while in a way the thought of something that big inside of his ass horrified him, he couldn’t help but wonder what it would feel like to be stuffed that full.

“I know, I know,” Rick said, adding another finger. “I’m a pervert.”

“Pretty impressive though,” Daryl said.

“Mhm.” Rick swirled his three digits around his rim, put them in, took them out, and put them in again. “I bet you could do it too. If you wanted to.”

Daryl looked more closely at the thick end of it, at the man’s rim stretched around the polished wood. He was both intimidated and aroused when he tried to imagine it in his own ass.

“Maybe,” Daryl said. “Maybe if I had help.”

“Oh sweetheart,” Rick said, his voice taking on that familiar tone of seduction that had almost wiped out Daryl’s bank account. “I’d happily spend a day testing the limits of your asshole.”

He withdrew his fingers when he said it, and Daryl looked back at him. His eyes were nearly black, his pupils blown wide with lust.

“Come here,” he said, pushing his sweats down and taking his place back in the office chair. His erection stood at attention, and Daryl licked his lips, already thinking about dropping to his knees and having a taste.

“Don’t,” Rick said, like he could read his thoughts. “Come sit.”

Daryl obeyed, stepping out of the pants pooled around his ankles and turning the monitor back to where it had been. Rick held his cock steady so the hunter could slide down into it, seating himself back in his lap right around the time batter boy walked up to discover the other man deeply seated on his bat.

“What the fuck?” the batter asked, and all stalker boy could do was freeze.

Daryl rocked, and Rick rocked with him, their bodies rolling together in harmony. Daryl felt the subtle friction building as they moved, pleasure already compounding when Rick wrapped his hand around him once more, stroking while they fucked. Daryl closed his eyes, enjoying the glorious combination of internal and external stimulation.

When he opened them again, batter boy was fucking stalker boy’s face while he continued riding the bat. He had no idea how they’d gotten there, but it didn’t matter. Hardly anything mattered when Rick was deep inside of him. Daryl shifted his weight so he could raise his body up. And it burned his thighs to do it, but he managed to start a slow bounce, one that Rick quickened by thrusting up into him hungrily.

Batter boy tossed the bat aside and plunged in, the hand attached to his taped wrist wrapping around stalker boy’s throat. Daryl groaned, forcing his aching thighs to keep going, quickening his pace. 

“There you go,” Rick said, “take what you want from me, Daryl. You deserve it.”

“Do that,” Daryl said. “Please.”

Rick’s left hand snaked its away across his chest, thumb and fingers gripping his throat and squeezing. And Daryl hadn’t known what to expect when he’d asked for it--a few moments of not breathing and then Rick letting go, maybe?

But he could breath just fine aside from gasping at the pleasure mounting with every movement. The pressure from Rick’s fingers felt like something else entirely. And he couldn’t explain it, but he wanted more.

More of whatever this was. More of Rick.

“Fuck,” Daryl groaned, echoed shortly after by batter boy, who had lifted his stalker straight into the air. He pulled his body on and off his cock like a toy. Daryl wanted to be someone’s toy.

No, not someone’s. Just Rick’s.

“Shit, I’m close,” Rick said, kissing his shoulder.

“Cum inside of me,” Daryl said. “Please.”

“Little cumslut,” Rick said, thrusting up into Daryl’s body vigorously. He stood up, the motion forcing Daryl’s body forward, and he had to slam his palms onto the edge of the desk to keep from falling into the computer. He angled his body instead, and falling just to the left of the keyboard.

The porn kept playing, though Daryl had no clue what was going on save the moaning and grunting.

“Jerk yourself off,” Rick ordered, his own hand firmly on the back of Daryl’s neck, holding his cheek down against the wood. Daryl found his cock and fisted it.

“C’mon Rick,” he said, trying his best to sound sexy and encouraging like snake boy had.

“You want my cum?” Rick asked. “Say it.”

“Want your cum,” Daryl said. “Want my ass full of it. Wanna be covered in it.”

“Me too.”

“Then do it. Fill my fucking hole.”

“Oh Christ,” Rick grunted, his fingers tightening under Daryl’s hair. He groaned deeply, giving Daryl exactly what he’d asked for, thrusting until he’d finished cumming and then staying inside of him. He took his hand off Daryl’s neck.

“Finish,” the operator said. And Daryl jerked his cock as hard and fast as he was physically capable of without hurting himself, pulling and pulling until he came too, spattering his orgasm all over the front of the desk and the carpet beneath it.

“Good,” Rick said. “That’s real good. Can you do something for me?”

“Anything,” Daryl panted. 

“Don’t move.”

Daryl’s brow furrowed, but he did as he was told, staying bent over the desk while Rick pulled out of him. He felt Rick’s fingers cover his hole, trapping his orgasm inside. More confusion, and then the fingers were gone, replaced immediately by Rick’s warm tongue.

Christ, that’s dirty.

Rick lapped at his hole hungrily, his tongue flicking and penetrating. And Daryl wished he could see. He would have traded every single one of his measly possessions for a video of Rick eating his own cum out of his ass.

“Alright,” Rick said, standing up when he'd finished. Daryl lifted up off the desk, turning around and kissing Rick with all the passion he could muster. The operator kissed him back, pushing him up against the desk and fisting his hair.

They didn’t stop for some time, tongues grappling and hands grabbing, like they couldn’t manage to get close enough to each other for it to satisfy. And Daryl was sure that if they could have somehow forced their two beings to merge through will alone, they very well might have.

“Fuck,” Rick said, when they finally forced themselves apart.

“Fuck is right,” Daryl said. “Also, you’re fuckin filthy.”

“Clearly you hated it.” Rick smiled and smoothed his hair. Daryl didn’t answer, settling instead for nuzzling into Rick’s touch.

“You wanna take a shower with me?” the former cop asked, and Daryl couldn’t help but sigh with exhaustion. He'd never been so gloriously sore. Shaking his head, Rick put a hand up to calm him. “Just a shower, I promise. I think we both need a few days of rest. Or at least a few hours.”

“I’d fuck you every five minutes if I could, but I can’t.”

“Just a shower. I promise. Then we’ll pick out a movie, a real movie.”

“One condition.”

“Name it.”

“It’s laundry day for me,” Daryl said, knowing that as much as he didn't wanna leave, he had to have work clothes. “Usually have to haul it to that place up the street, but...”

“But I have a washer and dryer,” Rick supplied, looking a little amused. He reached out and combed fingers through Daryl's damp hair. “Sure, sweetheart. I’ll even walk over with you and help you get it here.”

"Then I'm all yours," Daryl said, knowing when he said it that it probably applied to a lot more than just showers. 

Smiling, Rick took his hand and led him to the bathroom. 


	17. XVII

Rick wasn’t quite sure what to expect as Daryl led him down the hallway of his apartment building. It was clear from the color of the drywall and the minute cracks in the ceiling that it was an older building than the one he lived in (not that his was new by any standards), but it wasn’t terrible. Like his own place, Rick felt relatively safe, and there were no weird smells or any indications of mice or axe murderers.

“Ain’t much,” Daryl said, pausing outside his apartment to slide the key in the lock.

“That’s alright,” Rick said. “Mine isn’t either.”

“Yours is way better than mine,” he said, and he pushed the door open, his whole body stiffening in a way that made Rick want to kiss him breathless, not because it was cute or sexy but because he was clearly embarrassed by his home and, by extension, a part of who he was. And Rick hated that he felt like that at all. As if Rick would have cared if he lived in a cardboard box under the overpass.

He would have brought his sweet, gorgeous ass home like a foundling kitten.

Still, while he didn’t give a flying shit, he could see what Daryl meant about his apartment. There was nothing wrong with the place itself. It was clean and the walls were white and intact. It was just that it looked like the apartment of a person who had just moved in and hadn’t finished unpacking yet, though clearly it wasn’t.

Part of him silently vowed to help make Daryl’s apartment into an actual home. And part of him wanted to ask him to just go ahead and move in, like that wouldn’t be a completely irrational thing to do for someone he’d technically just met.

“It’s not bad,” Rick said, sitting down on the futon. It squeaked underneath him, and Daryl visibly cringed, which was unfortunate because Rick’s first thought was that it would be incredibly fun to devour the other man on his own bed after they recovered some energy. 

“This where you talked to me all those times?” Rick asked, running his hand reverently over the mattress.

“Mhm,” Daryl said, his eyes darting to the wall behind him. Rick followed them, wondering why he chose to look there. And then he remembered the particularly beautiful mental image he’d conjured up of Daryl with his ass up on the wall. Between finding out what Daryl looked like and what his place looked like, that image was only getting more clear and more wonderful.

“Can’t believe I’m sitting here where I made you cum all over your own face,” Rick said. “We need to recreate that sometime by the way.”

“Maybe at yours,” Daryl said. “Furniture is better.”

“Maybe,” Rick said. “But you gotta admit that it would be satisfying as hell to listen to this thing squeak while I claimed you over and over.” Rick rocked his hips in an attempt to replicate what he imagined the bed would do if they fucked on it, his lips twitching as Daryl visibly exhaled arousal.

“We’re supposed to be resting,” Daryl said, the slightest edge of regret to his voice. Rick decided to be good and not pounce on that hint of an opportunity. Even though he really, really wanted to, age and waning libido be damned. 

“We are, sugar,” he said, putting his hands up in mock surrender. “Doesn’t mean I can’t make plans. A man’s dreams are important.”

“Mhm,” Daryl said, turning away from him and pulling open a small closet. Rick held back a sigh of frustration when he watched him visibly stiffen again. What had embarrassed him this time? How could he get him to accept that Rick was never going to care if he was dirt poor or slept on a bed of lightly used paper towels? 

“It ain’t,” Daryl mumbled, so quiet that Rick almost didn’t hear him.  

“It ain’t what?” Rick stood up and stepped around the coffee table, laying a hand on the other man’s back. Peering over his shoulder, he could see Daryl stuffing clothes from the floor into a big black trash bag. The bag looked well-worn, like he’d already used it quite a few times for this purpose.

“It ain’t that I can’t afford shit,” he said, finishing up and pulling it shut by the yellow plastic drawstrings. He didn’t even meet Rick’s eyes. “I just didn’t see a reason.”

“Daryl,” he said softly, searching for the right words. “No one is judging you here.” Walking his fingers under the other man’s chin, Rick tilted it up so he could kiss him softly, languidly moving his lips against the other pair until he felt the construction worker physically soften.

“Didn’t figure on ever having company when I moved in here.” He flicked his eyes to the cardboard boxes on the shelves of his closet, a few clean folded clothes inside of those.

“You will now,” Rick said, “have company I mean. But that company doesn’t give a shit how you choose to live. I’ll hold you on the floor. I’ll kiss you against the fridge. I’ll fuck you right here in this closet on a pile of dirty clothes. I want you, Daryl, not your shit.”

And there was that look so distinctly Daryl, boring and searching. Rick maintained eye contact, giving him the opportunity to find whatever it was he needed. And he must have, his eyes finally breaking away from Rick’s, flicking downward toward his lips, once, twice, three times.

A couple of hesitant jerks, and Daryl leaned in to press his lips against his, clearly testing out the idea of being the one to initiate physical contact between the two of them. And Rick realized the other man had never been the one to start a kiss in a situation where they hadn’t already been kissing or fucking. He also realized he could really get used to it as he let Daryl have the reigns so he could keep the kiss within his comfort zone.

Tentatively, Daryl tangled his fingers with Rick’s, dipping his tongue once into his mouth before pulling out of of the kiss and pressing his forehead against the operator’s. Rick squeezed his hand lightly, a smile breaking across his own face when Daryl nuzzled at his nose.

“I want you too,” Daryl mumbled, the words low and raspy like boots on gravel.

“Already have me,” Rick said, and he knew it was fundamentally true the same way he knew that grass was green and brownies were delicious.

“Ditto,” Daryl said, before picking up the trash bag full of clothes. “Guess we should...”

The walk back to Rick’s apartment was pretty uneventful. Daryl had been right about their proximity, and they didn’t even need to make a full block to be back at the front door of the former cop's building. 

“After you,” Rick said, opening it, his feet already following Daryl inside before he heard someone else.

“Hold the door!” a male voice yelled, before seemingly realizing that it had come off a little rude and adding a much softer, “please.”

Rick turned to see a man with short curls and both arms absolutely loaded with groceries. He was clearly one-tripping it in the most stubborn way possible, and Rick had to admire that. He stepped back and let him inside before recognizing him as the friend Daryl had mentioned lived in his building.

Oh shit.

He had a feeling Daryl wasn’t exactly out yet and he didn’t know if he ever wanted to be. But, he reminded himself, the man didn’t have to know why Daryl was there. Maybe they were just buddies and Rick had offered to let him do his laundry. Maybe Rick had answered a Craigslist ad for a bag of free clothes. Maybe they had committed a murder and were trying to figure out what to do with the evidence. 

“Thank you,” the friend said, before recognizing Daryl standing there waiting. “Daryl?”

Daryl looked down at the floor, but Rick noted that he didn’t seize up the way he did some other times. He was embarrassed by the situation, but not by Rick or by the prospect of this guy knowing he was gay.

“Aaron,” Daryl said with a nod. Aaron looked at him and then back at Rick and then back at him. Rick didn’t miss the little flick of his eyebrow, nor did he miss Daryl looking down at the floor. So he did know Daryl was gay. 

“Here,” Rick said, reaching for a few of the grocery bags currently weighing down the other man’s arms. If he was a friend of Daryl’s, then he was a friend of Rick’s. “Let me help you with that.”

“Thank you,” Aaron said. “I need to lobby the city for a closer bus stop. It’s Rick, right?”

“Mhm.”

“Thought I remembered Mrs. Neidermeyer calling you that once. Right before she told me she’d love to eat you on a cracker,” Aaron said.

“Guess that explains all the cups of sugar,” Rick said, following Aaron and Daryl into the elevator. They all silently agreed to go to Aaron’s floor first to get rid of all the bags.

“Speaking of food,” Aaron said, “Daryl, did you ever get that steak we talked about?”

Daryl inhaled sharply and started coughing, his eyes welling up as he tried to catch his breath. 

“You alright?” Rick asked, holding back on calling him “sugar” just in case he’d misread the entire situation. Doubtful. He had made a damn good detective once for a reason. 

“Yeah, I’m...” Daryl sighed. “This is dumb.”

“What is?” Rick asked.

“Me being all embarrassed,” Daryl said. “Aaron knows I’m gay. No reason to just...”

“You don’t owe me anything, Daryl,” Aaron said, and Rick instantly liked him a little more.

“Nah,” Daryl said. “But there also ain’t a reason not to tell you either.”

The elevator doors opened and the three of them stepped out. Aaron’s apartment was nearly directly across from the elevator, which meant that it was just a few steps to get all the groceries off their arms. Both Aaron and Rick sighed, rotating tension out of their shoulders. Rick wondered how many weeks in advance the man did his shopping to have so many bags. Then again, maybe he had company a lot. Or maybe he just ate a ton. Construction probably burned a lot of calories.

“I guess...” Daryl trailed off, and Rick debated rescuing him, but he decided to give Daryl the chance to speak for himself. This was his friend and he had the right to tell him the way he wanted. Instead, Rick reached over and put his hand on Daryl’s shoulder, a silent show of support.

“I guess we, we’re, I don’t really know what we are,” Daryl said, sighing and looking at Rick. “Calling us boyfriends makes me feel like a damn teenage girl. Or are we even…?” Daryl looked down at the floor and back at Rick again. “Could we even call us that if it didn’t sound dumb?”

“You could,” Rick said. “Whatever you think we are, sugar, we are. Even if it sounds dumb.”

Daryl seemed to believe him without the need for a searching gaze that time, reaching up to pull Rick’s hand off his shoulder and lace their fingers together. And even if Aaron knew Daryl was gay, getting a display of affection from him in the presence of another human being still felt a lot like progress.

“I like boyfriends for the record,” Aaron said, already putting up his groceries, like having two men hold hands in his apartment wasn’t remotely out of the ordinary. And maybe it wasn't. “It sounds cute. Which you two are, by the way.”

“Shut up,” Daryl said, halfheartedly. He slowly let go of Rick’s hand and started pulling groceries out of bags, handing Aaron the stuff that needed to go in the fridge or freezer. Both of them paused as Daryl handed him a pack of steaks, the two of them standing there like some sort of meat advertisement tableau. Then Daryl gave Aaron the tiniest nod, and Aaron smiled before turning around to put them away, like the moment was totally normal. 

When the groceries were all sorted, they left Aaron’s apartment After the first load of laundry was secure in the washer, Rick showed Daryl his DVDs, letting him pick out the new Magnificent Seven before settling on the couch together, where the operator was content to wrap his arms around his new boyfriend and stay that way for the rest of the afternoon and evening, give or take a few slow, meandering make out sessions.

“So,” Rick said, groping for the DVD remote, “what was the deal with all the steaks?”

“Long story,” Daryl said. “But I guess if you want the short version, he was asking if you’re good in bed.”

“Porterhouse,” Rick said, remembering the incoherent word Daryl had uttered what already felt like years ago.

“Porterhouse,” Daryl repeated, settling back onto Rick’s chest. Rick leaned down to kiss him on the crown of his head and pressed play.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Reminder that you can always harass me on tumblr, also at DarylDixonGrimes.


	18. XVIII

By Thursday, the weekend Daryl had spent at Rick’s felt more and more like a distant dream. More than once, he started to ask Aaron if he remembered them helping with his groceries. Anything to help dissolve that eerie feeling that none of it had actually happened. Of course, it didn’t help that his friend hadn’t so much as even mentioned meeting Rick. And while Daryl knew it was out of respect for the fact that he wasn’t out at work, it didn’t help the situation.

Nor did it help the ever-mounting feeling of frustration Daryl felt in knowing that seeing Rick again should have been much much easier than it had turned out to be. After all, if Daryl could directly measure the physical distance between his apartment and his new boyfriend’s, he probably wouldn't even hit 100 yards. 

But the work on the construction site had apparently fallen way behind the schedule, which meant they were all pulling mandatory double shifts that had Daryl crawling home at close to one in the morning, tired beyond reason and so sore he could feel the ache in his bones. Their schedules just didn’t remotely match anymore, and his and Rick’s communication over the course of the week had become a strange back and forth. 

Thursday night was no different when Daryl collapsed on the futon, a pre-made turkey sandwich in his hand. He’d given up on trying to cook so much as a TV dinner when he got home, opting instead to hastily throw together sandwiches before he left in the mornings while he still had some semblance of energy (though that was waning as well).

He unlocked his phone, taking a sip of water. As usual, the small voicemail icon sat at the top. Barely managing to stay upright so he didn’t choke on his sandwich, he hit speakerphone and dialed in.

“You have two unheard voice messages.”

Daryl raised his eyebrow, stuffing the last bite of sandwich into his mouth. Usually Rick only left one.

“First voice message.”

“Hey sugar,” Rick said. “I just got home from work, and I gotta tell you that it’s really not as fun without you calling in every day.”

Rick paused.

“Well, every day might be overstating it a bit.”

“Not much,” Daryl muttered, falling back onto the futon, his feet still on the floor.  

“But not by much,” Rick said, and Daryl smiled, even as he tried to find the will to sit back up and take off his work boots. On Tuesday night, he’d actually fallen asleep just like he was now, booted feet still hanging off the bed.

“Anyway, just let me know you got home alright when you do,” Rick said. “Miss you.”

There was a brief moment of barely perceptible static and then the message ended.

“Next voice message,” came the robotic voice. Daryl scrubbed a hand over his face. He had to stay awake. Just another minute, he told himself. Just another minute and he could sleep.

“Hey darlin,” Rick said. “I feel like an idiot calling you again.”

“Know the feeling,” Daryl muttered, more to keep himself conscious than anything.

“This is just driving me crazy. I know you were here. I found one of your socks and I’m still cleaning cum off the desk, though to be fair I guess that could be mine.”

Boots. Sit up and take your boots off and that’ll help you stay awake.

Grunting softly, Daryl forced himself to sit up, staring down at his laces as Rick told him he felt the exact same way Daryl had been feeling all week, like it had been a very long and very good dream.

“Anyway, I’ve been thinking that since tomorrow is Friday and all, you should come here after work.”

Daryl turned to look at his phone.

“I know you still have work Saturday morning, but I don’t, not to rub it in or anything. Figured it wouldn’t matter if you came in late is all.”

Somehow in all that, Daryl managed to get one boot off. He dropped it on the carpet.

“So, if that sounds good to you, I’ll have a hot meal waiting. Maybe a back rub, but I'll keep my hands to myself otherwise. Unless you don't want me to, that is,"Rick said. “See you tomorrow.”

Daryl dropped the other boot onto the floor as the message ended, crawling into his bed in his dirty jeans and work shirt. Through barely-open slits that blurred his phone screen, he did his part of the routine. All week, this was how it had gone. Rick left a voice message at some point during the evening and Daryl texted a response in the wee morning hours.

“Home. Miss u. Tomorrow ”

When he woke up the following morning, still tired and clawing his way toward the coffee pot, Daryl couldn’t even remember pressing send.  


* * *

Knowing he’d be spending the night with Rick was the only thing that kept Daryl sane during the long day. Laying down hardwood flooring had always been one of his least favorite things to do at work. Having to make sure every piece fit together right, the crawling around on the floor, the need to get up and down over and over—it was exhausting on a good day. And it wasn’t a good day.

“Here,” Aaron said, handing Daryl a plank of wood. They’d ended up in the same room of the building after their second "lunch" break, and Daryl was grateful for a friendly face and for someone who actually helped instead of hindering.

“Thanks.” Daryl laid the wood down and slid it so the grooves on the edge interlocked with the other piece. Pausing with his elbows on the floor, he shut his eyes for a second. The sky outside the unfinished windows was a dark inky black with a slight hint of yellow from the temporary lights in what would eventually become the parking lot. Just a few more hours, and he’d be in Rick’s apartment curled up in his arms, blissfully asleep. 

“Why don’t you get up and trade me for a while?” Aaron asked, offering his hand. Daryl took it without hesitation. Aaron was the slower of the two of them when it came to laying flooring, but neither of them was going to be fast at anything anyway.

He handed Aaron a plank and leaned on one of the large square columns supporting the floor above them. Now the future felt as much like a dream as the past, and Rick and sleep were both so very far away. 

“You wanna share a cab home later?” Daryl asked, falling into the routine of handing Aaron wood and then getting the next piece ready. That tired, letting robotic movements take over was always the easiest. He felt like he was running on autopilot, and that was fine by him. 

“Guess we live close enough to.”

“Well, I’m actually going to your building,” Daryl said, looking around to make sure they were still alone. Tobin and Francine were on the opposite side of the room, far out of earshot, though admittedly Daryl didn't feel that threatened by either of them. 

“Steak dinner?”

“Fuck off,” Daryl said. “Wouldn’t have the energy to even sit at the table let alone chew.”

“I know the feeling. Just started dating this poor guy and he probably thinks I’m one step from ghosting him,” Aaron said. “I know I’ve gotta sound like one of those guys who just keeps making excuses, which is unfortunate because I can’t stop thinking about him.”

“Lot of that goin around,” Daryl mumbled. “Least we’re almost caught up.”

And it was true. As soon as they finished the floors, they could go back to a normal schedule for a little while. Tobin had already posted an updated one that held a ray of hope in the near future as far as Daryl getting a day off. And though right then he couldn’t imagine doing much with that day other than sleeping in Rick’s bed, he knew realistically they’d probably be doing a lot more than that.

It was a testament to how tired he was that his body didn’t even attempt to respond to that fantasy.

“Fuck,” Aaron hissed. He was already shaking his hand frantically when Daryl opened his eyes, not entirely sure that he hadn’t briefly fallen asleep against the column.

Aaron rolled his arm over, revealing a thin half-inch area of pink. Sluggishly, Daryl’s brain made the connection. He must have caught a little of his skin between two planks. This was the reason mandatory overtime was largely left to jobs that were less heavy equipment and more finishing touches. Accidents were almost inevitable, and it was much better that they were a smashed finger or a nail through the hand than a steal beam being dropped on someone’s head. That and running heavy equipment after dark was highly frowned upon by anyone living near the job site. 

“You alright?” Daryl asked.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Aaron said, gently rubbing a finger over the minor injury. “No permanent damage. But I think I’ll take you up on that cab ride. Neither one of us might make it if we have to walk.”

“Almost rather die than walk at this point.”

Aaron smiled in tired agreement and held his hand out for another plank.

* * *

 

Daryl and Aaron barely made it out of their Lyft after the car rolled to a stop outside the apartment building. Barely conscious, both of them practically fell out onto the street, all the grace a couple of drunks getting home after a night of heavy drinking.

“Bed. So close.” Aaron swiped a card near the entrance and pulled the doors open, his eyes barely open when he glanced back to make sure Daryl made it inside too.

Inside the elevator, they said nothing, both of them relying on the walls to stay on their feet as the thing went up, stopping first on Aaron’s floor where he got off with a fling of his arm that somewhat resembled a wave.

A few more seconds, and Daryl stepped off on Rick’s floor, trying his best not to run into the walls as he walked toward his apartment. He leaned on the sheetrock and knocked and then waited, dozing off against the drywall. The sensation of falling as his head dipped woke him a few seconds or minutes later, and he knocked again, louder this time, figuring Rick was already in bed. Another nod off and time passed in a blur, taking on an edge of the surreal. Furrowing his brow and pushing himself off the wall so it wouldn't happen a third time, he knocked again.

But there was nothing but silence, save a tiny whimper he barely registered as his own. He was so so tired, and all he wanted was to be inside that apartment. Groping in his pocket, he pulled out his phone. Sure enough, there was a voicemail for him. A deep sinking feeling started to settle in his stomach as he realized that he wasn't going to be sleeping in Rick's bed that night. The feeling grew deeper as he waited for his voicemail to start. 

What if Rick had changed his mind about him? 

“Hey sugar," Rick said, sighing deeply after he said it. "Shit, I really hope you get this before you leave work.”

Daryl groaned. No, no, no. The tiny bit of relief he felt at still being Rick's "sugar" couldn't compete with crushing disappointment and frustration. He just wanted a bed. A couch. A floor where he wouldn’t end up getting arrested or at least awoken unpleasantly and then kicked out of a building. Otherwise, he probably would already be asleep on the dingy carpet under his feet.

“It's just there’s been an accident. My kid’s in the hospital. He’s gonna be okay, everything’s okay now, but I’m out here and not there. And I really hope you’re not listening to this outside my door. If you are, I’m so sorry." He sighed again. "I know you understand because you’re you, but I wish I’d left you a key hidden somewhere or something. I just, I rushed right here from work.”

“S’ok,” Daryl said quietly, already stumbling back toward the elevator as he tried to convince himself he had it in him to make it around the corner without passing out in the middle of the sidewalk. 

“Anyway, I’ll let you know when I’m back and we’ll try this again. Please get some sleep, darlin. And let me know when you’re safe and sound in bed.”

Inside the elevator, his finger hovered over the lobby button, the half-block between Rick’s apartment and his own feeling like a fucking triathlon. He could have had the Lyft drop him there instead of getting out with Aaron. Lucky bastard was probably already asleep.

Aaron. The thought hit him as slowly as anything else at his current level of exhaustion. But it hit him nonetheless. Aaron had a couch.

Daryl hit the button for one floor down, stumbling out and knocking on Aaron’s door a few moments later, already prepared to apologize for waking him.

“Daryl?” Aaron asked, standing there in boxers and a tee shirt. And what a pair they must have made, two half-dead men trying to have some kind of a conversation. 

“Sorry. He ain’t here,” Daryl said. “Family shit. Your couch open?”

Aaron stepped aside, and Daryl registered nothing else but the few feet between the door and the sofa. He didn’t even take his shoes off, hanging his feet over the arm so he wouldn’t get dirt on the furniture. It took every last ounce of willpower he had to dig his phone out again.

“Safe at Aaron’s. Glad your kids ok. Sleep. Nite.”

Daryl dropped the phone on his chest the second he hit send. And then he was gone, lost in dreams he'd be too tired to remember. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To the person who wondered about Eric in the comments, here's some kind of an answer.


	19. XIX

Rick’s spent his Friday morning at work in a cheerful mood, with a soft easy smile and his feet up on the desk. The whole time, even as he spat out instructions or encouragement or lies about how hard he was, he thought about Daryl. Daryl and those shoulders and those eyes and that little half-moan, half-whine sound he made right before he came.

It felt like centuries since Monday morning, since he’d watched Daryl get ready for work, the simple jeans and plaid button up with steel-toed boots making Rick question if he had some kind of lumberjack fetish, not that Daryl’d looked much different when they'd met at the grocery store. Plaid though, that just wasn't fair.

“Gonna head out so I can get my laundry home,” he’d said, holding the trash bag up while Rick walked through the living room brushing his teeth. They’d exchanged a minty kiss before Daryl went on his way. In retrospect, Rick would have kissed him much longer if he’d realized it would be a lifetime before they could see each other again.

But on Monday, they had both still been under the delusion that they could see each other as much as they liked. They’d even had plans for Daryl to come by after work. Maybe they should have realized things were going far too well, because when Daryl had actually gotten to work, he found out that any plans the two of them might have had were shot to shit. The result was the seemingly longest week Rick could remember, days stretching on like syrup as he longed to kiss Daryl again, to run his fingers through his hair, to worship every inch of him from head to toe.

That week was finally coming to an end though, with plans set and Rick's mind running wild with possibilities he knew were nothing more than fantasy. He was under no delusions about there being a night of hot sex in his future. Or even a night of kisses and conversation. He was perfectly content with the idea of just seeing him again. Enough so that he dealt with even his most obnoxious regular with a smile.

Everything was great and full of happy possibility.

Until it wasn’t.

He was in the middle of a call when Lori’s name popped up on his cell phone. He couldn’t answer, not then, so he sent her a text instead.

“Can’t talk now. What’s going on?” he asked, muttering something to his caller about how hot she sounded and how she should go faster.

“Carl’s in the hospital. Just get here.”

Rick’s heart stopped. A million horrible scenarios ran through his head and he desperately wished he could teleport instead of having to drive two painful hours to see his boy. But he had to deal with the woman on the phone first.

“Sweetheart,” he interrupted his client as she told him she was about to turn on her toy. It took every ounce of control he'd ever learned in his previous occupation for him to stay calm and professional. “I hate to do this to you but there’s a bit of an emergency here at the Roman Empire.”

He looked out around his cubicle wall. Abraham was sitting at his desk playing with a couple of rubber bands.

“I know you like me, and I like you too, but I’m sure Augustus would be more than happy to fulfill your fantasies right now.”

“Oh...” she said. 

“Variety is the spice of life, darlin,” Rick said, trying to make it sound as appealing as possible. "I'll make sure you get another free ten with him too so you can decide if he's worthy." 

“Fine, alright." She didn't sound thrilled. 

He transferred her and practically bolted out of his chair, swinging by Martinez’ office, telling him what he'd done and that he was gone.

Walking briskly out of the building, he dialed his voicemail, hoping for more details that might put his thudding heart at ease. Maybe it was just a badly broken arm or something. He could deal with that, though he might have to rethink that drum set. 

“Rick,” Lori said, clearly struggling to talk around tears. “Carl’s been shot.”

Rick only had one thought: not him too. He started sprinting.

* * *

Rick had never been a fan of hospitals. He hated the underlying smell of disinfectant and the way that time always seemed to stand completely still, which made any waiting that had to be done even more torturous. And that was before that meth head shot him up. Now they reminded him of the incident, of the months he’d never get back and all the things he’d lost during that time. The only thing that kept him together within those sterile white walls was the fact that he had to be for his son. Otherwise, he might have fallen completely apart.

Across from him in the waiting room, Lori sat, a ball of jittery energy with her leg bouncing up and down like a jackhammer, her jean legs rustling. Shane held her hand, his eyes trained on the floor. Both of them had an air of guilt about them that Rick thought served them right. If he’d been there, this never would have happened.

It had been a hunting accident. They’d told him that when he arrived, grabbing him as he stood there frantically asking the woman manning the ER desk where he might find his son. Shane had taken on the task of telling him because Lori was a total wreck. Apparently Carl had gone out with his friend and his friend’s parents to hunt. His friend’s dad had been so busy tracking a deer that he hadn’t noticed Carl there on the other side of it before he pulled. The bullet had passed clean through the animal and into his little boy. 

Rick had been furious. His son had no business being around guns yet, or ever as far as he was concerned, but definitely not yet. Shane had taken the brunt of his rage as Rick cursed him out in a low voice there in the corridor outside the ER. After what had happened to Rick, what in the _hell_ had they been thinking?

It was well after dark when Rick remembered Daryl, their plans only occurring to him after a nurse informed them Carl was out of surgery and stable. And it wasn’t so much that he’d forgotten about him. Truthfully, he’d thought about him over and over during the course of the evening, wishing that the other man was there to hold his hand while he waited for news about his kid. It was just that he’d forgotten they were actually supposed to see each other, his brain far too stressed to make the connection.

“I need to make a phone call,” Rick said. “Forgot I was supposed to have company tonight.”

“New girlfriend, brother?” Shane asked. “That’d be good for you. Real good.”

Rick thought about lying, but he decided he didn’t give a shit. Shane already knew good and well he wasn’t entirely straight. And the two of them were hardly in any position to judge him for who he decided to fuck or eventually love.   
  
“Boyfriend,” Rick said, "and I'm not your brother." Biting back bitterness that would only make him feel like shit, he walked out of the waiting room before either of them could respond. Out in the parking lot, he called Daryl and hoped the other man could hear just how sorry he was. He also hoped he somehow got it before he headed home. Daryl had mentioned that his boss was real old-fashioned when it came to cell phones on the job and that everyone with any sense left theirs in their locker. He apologized again for good measure and headed back inside to do some more waiting. 

Hours passed like years after Carl was out of surgery. A nurse informed them early on that they were preparing to move him to a regular room out of the ER, but it was around 2:30 in the morning before they finally did that.

“Hey,” Rick said, smoothing Carl’s hair back. He’d woken up just barely sometime during the move, and it was clear from the haziness in his eyes that it wouldn't last long. 

“Dad,” Carl said, that little edge of excitement to his voice that Rick knew he’d miss when the boy got a little older and started to resent him as all teenagers resent their parents. “Guess you won’t be the only one with a scar now, huh?”

Rick sighed wearily and nodded. Guess not. 

“You held in there way better than I did,” he said, leaning over to kiss Carl’s forehead. The boy was too tired to wiggle away from him like he normally would. “I’m so proud of you. You fought so hard.”

Carl didn’t say anything, not that Rick expected him to. It wasn’t an easy thing to respond to for an adult, let alone a child. As long as he knew he meant it, then that was enough.

“I’m gonna head back to Atlanta now if that’s okay with you,” Rick said. “Guessing you'll have to stay here this weekend instead of coming to visit, but maybe mom’ll let me have you next week instead. We’ll get ice cream at that place you like, okay?”

“Okay, dad,” Carl said, his eyes already closing with the drugs pumping through his tiny veins. Rick kissed him on the forehead again and left the room, promising him on the way out that he'd be back down the following day. And realistically, he knew he should have stayed, but the town he'd once called home was the kind where the only lodging came in the form of run-down motels that hosted men like the addict who'd nearly killed him. And there was no way in hell he was going to sleep in the house he'd helped Lori choose, the one that he'd once thought he'd grow old and die in. 

The hospital too was out of the question. He could stay strong for Carl, but that had limits, and he could feel the thick inky cloud that never quite dissipated in his chest gaining more mass with every passing second. No, he wanted comfort, even if it was fleeting. He'd probably be back at the hospital before Carl woke up again. 

So with two cups of shitty vending machine coffee down his throat and a terse good-bye to Lori and Shane, he got in the car and headed back to the city.

* * *

When Daryl woke up, it was still dark outside, leaving him to briefly wonder why the fuck he was even awake. He didn’t need to pee and he definitely wasn’t ready to not be sleeping. It took several seconds for the light tap at the door to register in his brain, and he turned to see Aaron groggily stumbling toward it, grumbling incoherently the whole way.

Someone, male, spoke low from the hallway. Daryl closed his eyes, figuring Aaron would deal with whatever it was. Maybe it was that guy he talked about. Maybe it was an overzealous Jehovah's Witness. 

“Be my guest,” Aaron said. Half awake, Daryl heard the door close and lock again, right before someone softly laid their hand on his shoulder.

“Hey.”

His eyes flew open. Even in the dull light filtering in from the street lamps, Daryl knew that face. His heart skipped a beat.

“Hey,” Daryl said softly, groping around so that he could grab and hold the hand still resting on his upper arm.

“Mind if I join you?” Rick asked. “It’s been a long night.”

“Mm,” Daryl responded, rolling onto his side.   
  
“Kid still okay?” Daryl managed to ask as Rick attempted to climb over him like a hurdle.   
  
“Stable and out of the ER,” Rick said. Grunting and laughing softly, he managed to get over the top of him, wiggling to wedge himself into the space between his body and the back of the couch. Finally, he managed to settle there, wrapping his arm around Daryl’s middle and pressing his nose into the nape of Daryl’s neck. The construction worker heard and felt him inhale his scent, and then Rick sighed contentedly in his ear before kissing the skin there once.  
  
"Night, sugar." 

Daryl’s last thought before he fell back to sleep was that for that brief, fleeting moment, everything was right in the world. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Reminder that I live on a steady diet of comments and my own tears.


	20. XX

Rick woke barely two hours after he’d arrived to the sound of Daryl’s alarm and subsequent groan. And as much as he knew that, physically, he could go back to sleep in a heartbeat, he also knew there was no chance in hell that he would be sleeping anymore that day. Carl’s name ran through his mind over and over like an alarm of its own, reminding him that he had to be somewhere else as soon as possible.

Helping his half-dead boyfriend sit up first, Rick swung his legs over the couch, debating taking a shower before he left. He needed one, but he also needed to be back in that hospital he hated. The brief rest and the salt and earth smell of Daryl had quelled some of his anxiety about having to be there, leaving room for anxiety about not being there to flood in and fill its space.

“Hey,” Daryl mumbled, his eyes bloodshot and barely open. “Kid still okay?”

“No news is good news in this case, I imagine,” Rick said. And it was true. If they hadn’t called, then Carl was still stable. But that couldn’t quiet his brain as it told him it was time go, that he had to get on the road right then, that he had to hurry and get a shower and change and coffee and go, go, hurry, go. He didn’t realize his leg was bouncing until Daryl put a hand on his knee.

“You look like shit,” Daryl said, squeezing his leg. Rick pushed away the frantic rush in his mind just long enough to claim Daryl’s lips in a tired, lazy kiss that lasted only a couple of seconds.

“I need coffee and then I need to go back out there.” Somewhere else in the apartment, Aaron’s alarm rang out.

“Wish I could come with you,” Daryl said. “But you probably don’t want...”

“They already know I'm seeing someone, a man,” Rick said. “But no, it’s probably not a good idea. Not because of you though. Just that they don’t exactly know what I do for a living, and I don’t have the energy to figure out how to tell them how we met without mentioning it.”

“I get it,” Daryl said. “I’d be useless today anyway.”

“You’ve already helped more than you,” Rick said, standing up and offering him his hand. Daryl took it, and the two of them quietly slipped out of Aaron’s apartment and headed to Rick’s.

On the way, while Daryl struggled not to fall into walls like a drunk, Rick struggled with reality, every step setting off phantom vibrations in his jeans pocket. In the half-minute it took them to change floors and unlock a door, he checked his phone three times. Even though he knew he didn’t have the damn thing on vibrate anyway.

“Know you got way bigger problems than me right now, but shit I wish I’d left some clothes here,” Daryl said, rubbing his eyes like an overtired toddler.

“You’re welcome to anything of mine you can manage to get over those arms and shoulders,” Rick said, groping for his emergency coffee in the back of the cabinet, a blend of insanely caffeinated dark roast that he kept for days when his nightmares left him more dead than alive. “Do you need a shower too?”

“Don’t remind me,” Daryl said, his entire upper body resting on top of the kitchen counter. He nestled his head on a tanned, toned forearm, dark hair falling around his face like curtains. It was far to precious to be allowed. 

“Take one with me?” Rick asked. “I feel like you’ll fall over on your own anyway.”

“Probably true,” Daryl said, pushing himself up off the fake marble and looking at Rick like he very much wanted to die. Even with his son to worry about, Rick sincerely hoped this was Daryl’s last day of grueling work. Otherwise, he might keel over. If it wasn’t, Rick was going to try and convince him to feign being sick tomorrow, because there was no way in hell he could make it another day.

Tightly gripping his phone with one hand, Rick used the other to guide Daryl toward the bathroom. They showered quickly, Rick soaping Daryl up and then propping him against the wall like a wet umbrella. And as he quickly lathered himself up, listening for a beep or the sound of his ringtone, he took a mental note that they needed to do this some other time when they were both awake and unburdened. Because Daryl looked absolutely gorgeous wet, with rivulets of water running down his biceps and over his sharp collarbones.

And even though Rick was carrying far too much tension in his shoulders for his body to even think about indulging any of his fantasies right then, he could still easily imagine him washing Daryl’s hair, letting a soapy hand follow the indent at his lower back all the way down, watching the water run all over Daryl’s face while he sucked him off under the steady spray.

“C’mon,” Rick said, nudging his boyfriend, and he wasn’t entirely sure Daryl hadn’t managed to fall asleep standing up.

Outside of the shower, he hunted for a tan button-up he’d been given as a gift during a secret Santa exchange at work. Glenn had vastly overestimated his size, and the thing had been too big. It was one of those things he’d meant to donate but had never gotten around to. Which was for the best apparently, because it actually fit Daryl perfectly. He’d have to wear his same jeans again, but with a different shirt, probably no one would notice. Then again, they were all probably too tired to care.

Throwing coffee into travel mugs and hastily making Daryl some kind of lunch from what he had around his kitchen, Rick half-carried him downstairs. In the lobby, they met Aaron after Rick had Daryl text him and offer him a ride. His trip out of the city would take him right by their job site anyway. 

“Thanks for this,” Aaron said, looking every bit as much like death in the back seat as Daryl did in the passenger. Both men were wide-eyed, with an almost awe-like look on their face. And Rick had been that tired before, enough to know that both men probably felt like everything happening was a dream even though they knew it wasn’t. God, he hoped there weren’t any power tools in their future.

“Consider it a thanks for letting me in last night,” Rick said, pulling up to the curb next to the unfinished building. Eyes drooping, Daryl looked around for any witnesses and briefly grabbed Rick’s hand on the gear shift, giving it a squeeze.  

“See you when I see you.” He reached for the handle.

And like that, they were gone. Rick checked his phone one more time before he pulled back out into traffic, and then he headed out of Atlanta once more.

* * *

Rick was back at the hospital, smoothing soft brown hair off Carl’s forehead, before he finally realized the implication of the night before. Of course, he’d already known that he and Daryl were on a collision course, but he’d needed comfort and he’d gone directly to him without a second thought.

Then again, where else would he have gone? His only friends were work buddies he maybe got a drink with on occasion. His family were all either dead or miles away. Was he really going to call Abe at 4 a.m. and cry on his shoulder?

“Dad,” Carl mumbled, opening his eyes. In the hospital bed built to hold a full-size adult, he looked incredibly small, so fragile. Rick briefly considered cursing Shane and Lori out again, because how could they have ever let something so precious do something so dangerous?

“Hey, how are you feelin?”

“It’s not so bad,” Carl said, blinking slowly. The nurse had come in a few minutes before and added more morphine to his IV, and it showed. 

“Yeah, I’d imagine not.” Rick smiled.

“Carl, you’re awake!” Lori floated into the room, clearly thrilled to see his eyes open. She and Shane had left to find coffee and breakfast the second Rick walked in.

“Mom, stop, gross,” Carl said, trying to move away from the woman as she pressed kisses all over his forehead.

“My baby boy.” She sounded like she was on the verge of tears, and Rick had to remind himself to be at least a little kind. She was still suffering even if he was pissed at her. He rolled his eyes behind her back and slid down into the nearest chair.

“Mom! Dad, make her stop.”

Rick opened his mouth to speak, but he didn’t get the chance.

“Alright Lore, stop smothering the poor boy,” Shane said. A prickle of jealousy ran through Rick’s extremities and settled heavy into his stomach. Carl had asked his dad for help, joking or not, and that still meant Rick last he'd checked.

And Rick could have been spiteful or rude and said just that, but Carl didn’t need them all taking stabs at each other in front of him. For a second, Rick wished he really had brought Daryl with him though, even if all they did was exchange a look when Lori shot Shane a glare. She never had liked being told what to do.

“So Carl,” Rick said, inserting himself back into the conversation that never should have excluded him to begin with. “What are you thinking about for lunch? I’d say getting shot means you can have whatever you want.”

It was Rick’s turn to receive one of Lori’s glares. His lips twitched when he saw her pivot.

“Anything?” Carl asked.

“Anything,” Rick said.

Carl went quiet for a minute, the gears in his head rotating through a cloud of morphine and whatever else was in the cocktail they’d been giving him. When he finally answered though, he did so with conviction.

“I want a triple sundae from Hershel's. With both kinds of ice cream and hot fudge and caramel and whipped cream.”

“You got it.” Rick smiled. Actually, a sundae didn’t sound like such a bad idea for his lunch either. He looked at the clock. It was only 10:30 in the morning, but by the time he drove the ice cream shop and back, it wouldn’t be unreasonably early to eat.

“Richard, can we talk in the hall?” Lori asked.

“Sorry, Lore, but if I’m gonna beat traffic,” Rick said, holding up his keys, knowing full well their town had never had anything remotely resembling traffic, excluding the area by the high school after a Friday night football game. Lori knew it too, her jaw tightening. She pursed her lips, but didn’t say anything else.  

“Be back in a few,” Rick said, patting Carl on the top of his head and ruffling some of his hair.

* * *

Daryl dozed off at least three times while they were putting in baseboards. He leaned his head against a wall for two seconds and the next thing he knew, he was on the floor blinking up at the ductwork. Luckily they were rubber baseboards, which meant glue instead of a nail gun, or he probably would have shot Aaron more than once. Not that Aaron was any more awake than he was.

“Listen up, everyone,” Tobin said, standing in the middle of the room with a clipboard.

Both of them dropped a baseboard, swearing quietly and picking it back up before it adhered to the floor. Pressing it into place first, they turned and listened.

“It looks like you’ve all got a few pieces left, but after that, we’ll officially be where we needed to be as of today.”

Relief flooded through Daryl in a way he didn’t think possible. He was finally,  _finally_  going to get to sleep. A couple of his co-workers clapped or halfheartedly whooped with muted enthusiasm. 

“I know you’re all tired. I’m tired too. So I spoke with the big bosses, and we’re shutting down as soon as you get those last pieces laid. Full pay for today.”

“So we can go as soon as we’re done?” Francine asked, yawning through her words.

“Yep.”

Daryl turned and looked at Aaron, the two of them locking eyes and immediately reaching a silent agreement. With some kind of burst of adrenaline rooted in the thought of finally escaping their week of hell, they laid the last pieces of baseboard in all of five minutes, Aaron stabbing at the Lyft icon on his phone three or four times on their way to the service elevator.

“You sharing?” Aaron asked.

“Yep. Can tell me how much I owe you for last night and today when we’re both awake.”

“Want me to add a stop or are you visiting your friend?”

“Don’t think he’s there.” Daryl frowned, but it didn’t matter. Even if Rick was home, all he was gonna do was sleep. Though both Rick’s arms and Rick’s mattress sounded a lot better than passing out on the futon alone.

Aaron nodded. In some act of mercy gifted to them by the universe, their car was waiting for them by the time they made it out of the building.

Back at home, Daryl forced himself to stay awake long enough to heat a can of chili and stuff it into his mouth, standing the whole time so he wouldn’t fall asleep and drown in a can of Hormel. Outside the sun was still up, but he didn’t care. He didn’t care if he slept clean through to the next morning.

As soon as he hit the futon, he knew he’d be sleeping with his boots on. But he managed to pull his phone out of his pocket, his lips curling downward when he didn’t have any new voicemails, though it was much earlier than Rick usually called and Rick definitely had other things on his mind.

“Let us go early. Regular schedule again. Home. Gonna sleep for a week. Hope it’s all good.”

Daryl let himself doze off with the phone on his chest, waking briefly when it vibrated.

“All good, darlin. See you soon.”

Smiling he rolled over, boots and all, and let sleep claim him. He dreamed of blue eyes and a honey voice mouthing "sugar" against his skin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Poor baby Daryl FINALLY gets to sleep. 
> 
> And I'm 200% sure Rick got a brownie sundae. ;)
> 
> Also while I've got you all here, I just started a new Rickyl story called "If a Tree Falls," which is exactly nothing like this story. But since I have a captive audience, I'll just kindly ask those interested to pop over and read it anyway. 
> 
> Feel free to bug me on tumblr dot com at DarylDixonGrimes.


	21. XXI

By Monday morning, Daryl felt like a human being again. He woke up around ten feeling decently rested, rolling over and pulling the blankets tighter around him when he remembered he didn’t have to be anywhere that day.

A small part of him was a little bummed that his first day off in what felt like centuries was on a day when Rick had to work, but Rick hadn’t been home the previous day anyhow, opting to spend it out of town with his kid.

Deciding it couldn’t hurt for Rick to at least know he was thinking about him, Daryl pulled his phone under the covers and then moved them up over his face, using them as his own private texting fort.

“Morning.” Daryl stared at the word, his thumbs hovering over the keyboard. He willed his brain to come up with something a little more clever than that, but he had nothing. Shrugging, he sent it and then contemplated leaving his blanket cocoon for toast.

“Morning. Gotta say that a single word from you is more interesting than this entire phone call,” Rick sent. Daryl tried to imagine doing a job where he might be telling someone to ram things inside of them on the phone while he casually texted his boyfriend. He couldn’t.

“Miss those,” Daryl sent back. And he did. It had only been a week and a half since he’d last had Rick confidently spouting the filthiest shit he’d ever heard at him through his phone, but it seemed like years.

“Yeah? What are you wearing, sugar?” Rick sent, and Daryl raised his eyebrow.  

“Underwear & a blanket.”

“Why did I decide to go to work today again?”

“Think your supposed to tell me what you’re wearing now,” Daryl sent, not that it mattered. He was convinced Rick could wear a trash bag toga and still look damn good. 

“Black sweatpants and a plain gray tee shirt. Never got around to doing any laundry over the weekend.”

Daryl stared at his phone and tried to envision Rick in that outfit, the way the black sweats would sit perched right above his hips. In his head, the shirt was tight, stretching across his muscular back so that they showed with every movement.

He also tried to figure out what to say back. On the phone, Rick usually took the lead, letting Daryl talk back or answer him with as few words as he wanted to use. This was different though. Sexting, if that’s what they were doing, would require a little more effort on his part. Daryl’s thumbs hovered over the keyboard again. Something clever. Something sexy. He bit his lip.

“Bet I could still get hard just by looking at you,” Daryl sent, feeling decently proud of it. It wouldn’t win any awards at the 17th Annual Sexties, but it wasn’t half-bad. He waited impatiently for Rick’s reply, knowing it would be infinitely better than what he’d just said.

Except Rick didn’t send back words at all. Shortly after Daryl hit send, his phone informed him that he had an incoming multimedia message. A picture? Of what? Daryl licked his lips and waited for the thing to finish coming through.

But it wasn’t a picture either. A blurry still of Rick in his headset sat off center in the frame. Daryl clicked and watched Rick wink at the camera before slowly running the lens over his body and his outfit. Then he re-centered it on his face before he spoke. Daryl knew, of course he knew, that the words Rick were saying were for the benefit of whatever client was on the other end of that headset.

But that didn’t stop every ounce of blood from flooding into his cock when Rick’s eyes seemingly locked on his through the screen, his deep southern drawl spitting out the kind of filth that made Daryl’s heart tap dance, his breath catchin in his chest.

“Oh sugar, I’d deep dick you until you were screaming my name.”

Daryl whimpered quietly and watched it again and again until he couldn’t stop his hand from rubbing his erection through the thin cotton of his underwear. And in all the replays of the video, Daryl forgot he was probably supposed to respond. He jumped when his phone beeped.

“Not writing back. Your hands occupied? ;)” Rick sent.

Daryl licked his lips.

“You got a dirty mouth, Rick Grimes.”

“I showed you mine...”

Daryl bit his lip. It wouldn’t make sense for him to send back anything with sound, not if Rick was genuinely working. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t do something a little more quiet. And he couldn’t believe he was even considering what he was considering but seeing that video made him want Rick and, more than that, made him want to make Rick want him.

Daryl peeled the blankets off until it was just him in his underwear on the futon. Fiddling with his phone first until he found a comfortable-ish way to hold it, he hit record and slid his hand down his torso up under the waistband. He didn’t push his underwear down, opting to leave everything hidden. But there was no mistaking the up and down motion of his hand within their confines as he rubbed his dick, biting his lip so he wouldn’t moan. It was torture to make himself stop so he could actually send the video, messing around in the settings first so he could figure out how to take the sound out. There wasn’t much, a lot of rustling mostly, but he didn’t want to embarrass Rick or get him in trouble.

“No sound. Promise,” Daryl wrote, attaching the video. And then he hit send and waited, struggling his hardest not to put his hand back down his shorts.

It felt like ages before Rick finally answered, and Daryl wondered if he was doing the same thing he’d just done, watching it over and over.

“Any plans today?” Rick sent back. It wasn’t the steamy response Daryl had been expecting, but his hips still rolled up off the mattress a bit in anticipation anyhow. The question practically asked when they could fuck, and Daryl wanted to send back “right now” even if it wouldn’t make any sense as a reply.

“Not really,” Daryl sent. The next few seconds he spent waiting for Rick’s answer were torture. He imagined going to the nearby apartment building and meeting him there later, both of them struggling to keep their hands off each other while they made their way to his floor. Hot kisses in the elevator, Rick’s hands roaming his body.

God, when had Daryl gone from pretty much a virgin to some kind of sex-crazed monster?

“Your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to stop touching yourself immediately. Get up, go take a cold shower if you need one. My lunch break is in an hour. Mine or yours?”

“Yours. Definitely yours,” Daryl sent back without hesitation.

“See you then. About an hour and ten by the time I walk back.”

Daryl put the phone down and got up, deciding to take a shower as Rick suggested. Some of that was to take care of his erection. He let the spray stay ice just long enough to force it down and then he cranked the heat up, washing away any sweat and grime left over from work the day before. He even scrubbed at his ass, dipping into it a little with his fingers, knowing full well that Rick’s mouth liked to wander and nowhere was off limits.

When he finally felt satisfied that everything was as clean as he could make it, Daryl got out and toweled off before throwing on some clean clothes. Picking his phone up, he groaned a little in frustration at the time, the anticipation of his romp with Rick already flowing right to his dick.

Soon, he told it, adjusting the fit of his underwear and jeans to accommodate it.  

Daryl laid back on the futon and played the video of Rick again. All there was left to do was wait.

* * *

Rick found Daryl leaning against the wall outside his building, one steel toed boot casually up on the wall, pulling his jeans taut around his thigh. He’d rolled the sleeves on a red plaid shirt up to his elbows, tanned forearms hanging loosely to his side. As Rick approached, he peeled himself off of the building. The voice in Rick's head quietly said, "nice." 

“Hey,” Daryl said quietly while Rick swiped them into the complex.

“Well?”

“Well what?”

“You said you could probably still get hard just looking at me,” Rick said, hitting the up button on the elevator. “Are you?”

Daryl didn’t answer him at first, stepping into the elevator with Rick on his heels. He didn’t say anything until the doors closed.

“You tell me,” Daryl said nervously, the words mumbled out around the thumb he’d slid between his lips.

Rick tilted his head, surprised to hear Daryl be so bold with him so early on in this meet-up, even if he had said it with all the confidence of a robber at a cop convention. Fire brimming in his veins, he stepped across the floor of the elevator and took a full handful of the front of Daryl’s pants, squeezing his erection through the denim. Daryl moaned at the contact and Rick moaned at finding him so damn hard.

Blue eyes met a matching set and then he crashed his lips into Daryl’s, nipping at them and rubbing him through his jeans, his other hand wandering up his side before roughly gripping the back of his neck.

“I’m gonna tear you apart,” Rick said, somewhere en route from Daryl’s mouth to his neck, his lips brushing the words against his jaw. Daryl moaned, rutting into his hand.

And then the elevator dinged and they fell silent, breaking apart with warm, red lips. They walked briskly down the hallway toward Rick’s apartment, and Rick heard Daryl panting quietly behind him the whole time he spent fishing for his keys and shoving them in the lock. He tried to put his car key in first, so focused on the man behind him that he couldn’t even concentrate.

Finally, he got it open, grabbing Daryl and tugging him inside, letting the thing slam shut behind him. The two of them managed to get as far as the living room and then they both fell to their knees on the carpet, kissing feverishly. Rick’s hands made their way to Daryl’s ass, squeezing it roughly. Daryl’s hands gripped his back, digging into the muscle there.

Rick shoved him to his back on the floor and Daryl pulled him down with him, parting his legs around Rick’s hips. Rick arched backwards to look at him, finding eyes nearly black with lust staring up at him. Just to watch his face when he reacted, Rick ground his body down against Daryl’s, groaning quietly in the back of his throat and smiling with satisfaction at the way Daryl’s brow furrowed, his eyelids fluttering and his bottom lip separating from the top.

“I am gonna absolutely wreck you,” Rick said, diving back in to lathe his tongue over Daryl’s Adam’s apple. He rocked his hips into Daryl’s again. And Jesus, he remembered why he’d always loved floor sex so much. It wasn’t the easiest on the knees, but the traction, the leverage.

One more grind of their bodies together and Rick moved up onto his knees between Daryl’s thighs, tugging his gray shirt off and tossing it aside. Daryl watched him like it was the most captivating thing he’d ever seen, licking his lips, so Rick kept going.

“A little payback, sugar,” Rick said, sliding his hand down into his sweatpants and tugging on his cock within the confines of the fabric. Daryl reached up and gripped his thighs, squeezing his way down before sliding them back up. Up and down, up and down, Daryl caressed his legs, his hands matching the rhythm of Rick’s hand inside his sweats.

It took a hell of a lot of mental fortitude for Rick to stop, pulling his hands free and hopping up off the carpet.

“Stay there,” he said. “Maybe lose the shirt while I’m gone.”

It took Rick all of fifteen seconds to walk to his bedroom and rip open the night stand drawer, his hand closing around a bottle of lube. When he made it back to the living room, he found Daryl squirming on the floor, his shirt precariously hanging from the coffee table.

“Catch,” Rick said, tossing the lube at him. Daryl snatched it out of the air. Both hands free, Rick pushed his sweats down, taking his underwear down with them. Daryl’s eyes immediately zeroed in on his erection, his tongue sliding across his lips. And damn the fact that this was a quick lunch break fuck because Rick wanted to absolutely violate his mouth. He had a brief image of Daryl on his knees before him, cock in his mouth, drool dripping out around the edges.

“Jeans. Off.” Rick stepped forward and dropped back onto the carpet, helping tug Daryl out of his clothes, stripping him stark naked. Rick reached behind him and put one hand on Daryl’s leg right under his knee, pushing on it until he pulled it up, then he did the same to the other side, the change in angles granting him easier access to the place he wanted to visit most

Rick pried Daryl’s cheeks apart, staring at the puckered rim within them. He wished they had more time, more time for him to lick and lathe over that hole until Daryl was a quivering mess begging to be penetrated.

“Here, sugar, get these sloppy wet for me,” he said, holding out his hand. Daryl leaned up and put his mouth on them first, slobbering all over his digits before popping open the lube and adding some of that to them as well.

“Tell me when,” Rick said, and then he sat to work, opening Daryl up as fast as he physically could without hurting him. He didn’t even bother trying to tease, too focused on the one thing they both wanted above anything else.

“Do it,” Daryl said quietly, reaching down to grip Rick’s wrist and pull his fingers out of him. “Said you were gonna wreck me.”

“That what you want, sugar? For me to rip you to pieces and put you back together so I can do it again?”

“And again,” Daryl confirmed, his chest rising and falling quickly. Without any more teasing or hesitation, Rick grabbed his thighs and pulled them tight around him before slowly plunging inside. Rick closed his eyes, the world around him falling away and leaving behind nothing but searing heat and pressure and the faint twitches of Daryl’s body as it gave way to accommodate him.

“Jesus,” Rick hissed, the word taking about three seconds longer to say than it should’ve. He felt his hips try their best to stutter into the warmth of Daryl’s hole and he bit his lip in concentration, focusing all his energy on keeping them still long enough for Daryl to adjust.

“You gonna fuck me or what?” Daryl finally asked, and Rick responded by pulling nearly all the way out so only the head of his cock remained before diving back in. So tight, so warm, so fucking good.

Daryl clamped his legs tighter around Rick’s hips and hooked his legs around him, pulling him in deeper, and Rick very nearly lost himself. Digging his fingertips into Daryl’s thighs, he jerked his lower body upward, adjusting and adjusting until he found an angle that made Daryl growl in his throat. And then he thrust in again, changing speeds and savoring the way Daryl’s hot, tight ass felt around him. Slow, fast, fast, slow, so slow. He watched Daryl’s cock twitch, fascinated by it and the thin line of shiny precum stretching from the tip to Daryl’s lower abdomen.

“Rick,” Daryl groaned, eyes clamped shut. Rick leaned forward, slowly lowering himself down on top of him until he could feel Daryl’s cock pressed between them, until he knew every thrust would give him the same glorious friction he was getting from his hole.

“That feel good?” Rick asked, mouthing at Daryl’s collarbone.

“Mmm,” Daryl moaned softly, his forehead creased with ecstasy. “Do I?”

“You have no idea. I’d leave my cock in this tight fuckhole of yours all day if I could. Just take you to work and let you sit on my lap while I talked dirty in your ear.”

Rick could feel the slight wetness of Daryl’s cock rubbing against his skin, and he wasn’t entirely sure he was going to wash it off before he went back to work. There was something about the thought of sitting around for the rest of the afternoon covered in Daryl’s filth that drove him a little wild. He rocked his hips harder, gripping Daryl’s sides and taking full advantage of the solid floor beneath his knees.

“I’m… Rick, can I?”

“Can you what?” Rick asked, the fact that Daryl was asking for permission making some part of him purr in approval. “I wanna hear you say it.”

“Can I cum?” he asked. “Please.”

“So good for me. Go on then, Daryl. I wanna feel it smearing between us.”

“Dirty fuck.”

“Your dirty fuck though,” Rick said, his body drawing up tight. It took everything in him to hold off until Daryl came.

“Fuck,” Daryl groaned, the word vibrating deep in his throat. And Rick felt his cock twitch between them, felt the warm wetness of his Daryl’s cum smearing deliciously across his skin. He let himself go the second Daryl let go, releasing deep into his hole with a low growl.

He stayed on top of him for a second, relishing in the weightlessness that overtook all his limbs and in the feeling of Daryl’s chest rising and falling beneath him. Vaguely, he could feel Daryl’s hammering away in his rib cage, and he tilted his head to kiss as close to the center as he could.

“Stay still,” Rick said, pulling out and trapping his release inside with his fingers. And he knew it was probably close to time for him to throw his clothes back on and walk back to the office, but he couldn’t do it without doing this first. He dipped down, dropping his head between Daryl’s thighs before moving his hand so he could tongue at Daryl’s rim, lapping up his own cum as it ran out.

“Still fucking dirty as hell,” Daryl said. And for once, Rick didn’t answer, too busy crawling his way back up Daryl’s body to kiss him with a mouthful of cum.

Daryl jumped at first, startled by the taste or the fact that it was happening or maybe both, but he relaxed just as quickly, moaning softly as he brushed his tongue against Rick’s, cum smearing across both their tongues and lips. When Rick pulled away he held Daryl’s cheeks, nudging his lips back open with his thumbs, and then he slowly let the rest of the cum in his mouth dribble down into Daryl’s.

Daryl swallowed it without a moment’s hesitation and Rick reached up to smooth his hair back, brushing it with his fingertips.

“You are so goddamn gorgeous,” Rick said.

“And you’re goddamn dirty.”

“But also gorgeous?” Rick teased, finally moving out from between Daryl’s legs, reaching for his tee shirt even though he very much wanted to lay down beside him and stay.

“Mhm.” Daryl sat up behind him and lazily mouthed at his shoulder. Rick closed his eyes, indulging him for the briefest moment before he gently pulled away and tugged his shirt back on. When he checked his cell phone after finding his sweat pants, he realized he had about five minutes to get out of there.

“Aren’t you gonna clean up?” Daryl asked. And Rick probably should have. There wasn’t anything particularly nice or pleasant about being covered in dry cum. And maybe he’d sneak off to the bathroom on break and do it then. But for the moment, he didn’t want to be clean.

“Nope.”

“Jesus, Rick.”

Smiling at the naked man still sitting on his carpet, Rick crossed the living room and stepped into the small kitchen, opening up his catch-all drawer and digging around until he found the thing he was looking for.

When he stepped back into the living room, he found Daryl gathering his clothes.

“Here,” Rick said, dropping his spare key and entrance card into his palm. Some part of him whispered that he’d probably never ask for them back. “You’re welcome to take a shower and hang out, watch my cable, watch my porn and jerk off onto my desk, whatever.”

“You want me to slip these under the door if I leave?” Daryl asked.

“Nope. You don’t have to leave either. I just didn’t want you to be stuck here,” Rick said, kissing him briefly.

“What time you get off?” Daryl asked, and Rick bit back the juvenile urge to say “five minutes ago.”

“Five, and I wish we could do something together after. I've missed you more than you know.”

“You wish?” Daryl asked, before quietly adding, “Oh, right.”

“Yeah,” Rick said. “Actually, you know what, do you wanna come? Would that be too weird?”

“You’re gonna go see the kid, right?” Daryl asked.

“Yeah, they said he’ll probably get to go home this week, but it’s still gonna be a few days,” Rick said. “So I’ll be trekking back and forth.”

“I’ll, uh, think about it while you’re gone.”

“Sure thing, sugar,” Rick said, leaning forward and grabbing another quick kiss. “Thank you for lunch.”

He winked casually and walked out, leaving Daryl alone naked in his apartment.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, I love hearing your thoughts. What were your favorite lines? What do you wish Rick had done to Daryl? In an alternate reality where people are chairs, how do you think Rick and Daryl would look around a nice mahogany table? 
> 
> Come talk to me on Tumblr at DarylDixonGrimes.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Of Sex, Love, and Telephone Wires - Edit](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10224812) by [PixieReedus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PixieReedus/pseuds/PixieReedus), [Rickyl_edits](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rickyl_edits/pseuds/Rickyl_edits), [YeyaGrimes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/YeyaGrimes/pseuds/YeyaGrimes)




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